No More Learning

Discite historiam exemplo moniti! Two thousand years have
passed, and those same signs are spread abroad upon the
waves of time. The last throes of the Roman Republic were
reflected in the terrible, epileptic convulsions of the French
Revolution. Finally, the days of Caesar were remoulded into
the days of Napoleon.
Krasinski, fondled as an infant by the soldiers
fighting for Bonaparte, had been brought up by his
father in a passionate admiration for Napoleon which,
not uncommon even in this country in a generation
nearer his age than ours, with the Poles reached
something like a religious veneration. To Mickiewicz
Napoleon stood for a superhuman figure, imbued with
the spirit of Christ, called to the task of redeeming the
political world till he forfeited it by personal failing.
In Krasinski's case Napoleonism dispelled the shadows
that lay before his vision, and led him to the rising of
his orient.
G.
15
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? 226
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
And the Christian Caesar, higher by a whole past epoch
than his predecessor, filled with the knowledge of himself, and
with the aim for the sake of which the Spirit of God that
directs history had sent him here below, said, as he died on the
rock of exile, "The beginning of the new era will be reckoned
from me. " In that word is contained the truth both of his and
of the whole past. But before that truth is developed and
fulfilled, before the world shall pass from the Napoleonic
standpoint to another, to a more entire and more sanctified
transformation, it must first be worn out as the ancient world
was worn out. . . From the time of the Gracchi the pagan world
did not rest till it heard the promise of Christ: from the time
of Luther the new world has had no rest. . . and shall not rest
till it reaches, not now the hearing, but the understanding and
the fulfilment of the promise of Christ.
There is decadence of religion everywhere, goes on
Krasinski; an anarchy of thought. All forms of belief
have passed over the human race, all crying for the
spark of life that shall renew their youth.
That anarchy is so fearful that it necessarily tends to
crisis--that desire so great, and up to now vain, that it neces-
sarily calls for the help of the Father Who is in heaven.
When was that help ever refused? When did God ever forsake
history when history raised its hands to Him, and in the
language of all the peoples of the earth cried out: " Lord, show
Thyself to us"?
Endless desire brings with it eternal yearning and endless
grief. As the individual, so the human race sinks into melan-
choly. From collective man shall also often flow the bloody
sweat of agony on the Mount of Olives of history. Were it
otherwise there would be no spirit of humanity training itself
by its own will. Where would the merit be with which it
merits in this time? What is that merit if not its life in history,
if not that course of labour divided into the moments of death
and of the resurrection of the dead from death? And how
can it die if it does not doubt? And how can it rise again
if it does not believe? Not to die you must be God. To
die you must be man. When the spirit of God unites itself
with the nature of man, the divine life breaks asunder the
human grave--Christ died and rose again from the dead.
And to the epoch, begun in His word, the same must be-
fall before it can by deed be adequate to the whole purport
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? Dawn
227
of that word. Our fathers stood on that declivity which leads
to the grave. Fate carried us further, and laid us deeper--
we are in the grave. I err, we are already beyond the grave.
You all know, my brothers, that we were born in the womb
of death: and from the cradle your eyes have been used to
look on the livid stains of death, widespread on the body of
the European world. Hence the eternal grief that gnaws your
hearts: hence the incertitude that has become your life. . . But
every end contains in itself the successive beginning. The day
of death only precedes the hour of awakening. Therefore con-
sider attentively, and the signs of death shall of a sudden be
transformed for you into the signs of resurrection. . .
Christ showed to men the idea of humanity. Before Him
save for the Hebrews there were no nations, for the aim was
unknown to which the nations are advancing, to which they
gravitate like the planets to the sun. He promised that some
day there shall be in the world one only fold and one shepherd.
He bade those praying to the Father repeat each day these
words: "Thy Kingdom come ": and with tha^ sigh for two
thousand years we are all imploring God for the sight of the
ideal of humanity on earth.
Somewhat on the lines of what he had already said
in The Treatise of the Trinity Krasinski speaks of the
deed, the merit, by which we "become what we shall
remain in the sight of God," and by which we work
out our personality. It is only given to us on this earth
and amidst humanity.
The humanity in the midst of which we gain our eternal
future life must itself be a great and holy harmony in the
Divine thought. . . Humanity on this earth and the immortality
of each individual beyond the grave are two equal circles,
serving each other reciprocally, not to be parted either in
heart or understanding. Each is the collateral of the other, its
condition, its fulfilment, and both blend into a third and higher,
the power of the very God.
Humanity "is the entirety and the unity of all the
powers of the spirit of man, expressed visibly on this
earth by the concord and love of its members, that is,
of ' nationalities. '" As the members of the human body I
are the outward parts of the personality that rules \
iS--a
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? 228 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
them, so are the nations the members of one universal
humanity.
The realization of Christ's word beyond religious
spheres could not be effected before Christianity had
prepared the ground by penetrating each individual
soul. But now that the individual has accepted this
word it is time that its realization shall reach further
and, acting upon collective humanity, idealize and
Christianize the governments of the world.
The world is near, not to a great change, for nothing can
be changed of Christ's words, but to the great transfiguration
of them, the deeper understanding of them, the higher ad-
miration of them. Already in these expressions: "Render to
God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's," is com-
prised the whole future movement of mankind. For because
all is "God's," the state of that momentary division between
what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God must
ever lessen, and what was yesterday considered as owing to
Caesar, to-day must be counted as belonging to God until the
government of Caesar shall be nought and God's kingdom all.
Governments are a human creation. . . Only nationalities
are the Divine creation.
Hence we see these governments, neither animated by
nationality, nor comprehending its sanctity, proceeding
to such violations of the moral law as the partition of
Poland. That injury deliberately committed against an
: unoffending nation was, says Krasinski, more than a
political crime. It was an outrage upon the Christ-
idea that, till it is righted, stands in the way of the
grand ideal of the Christianization of policy and earthly
government.
In that nationality, in whose wronging the greatest
violence was done against humanity, there must break forth
most strongly, there must shine forth most clearly, the idea of
humanity.
Our death was necessary, necessary shall be our resurrec-
tion, so that the word of the Son of man, the eternal word of
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229
life, shall flow through the social circumference of the world.
By the very fact of our nationality, martyred on the cross of
history, will be manifested to the conscience of the human
spirit that the sphere of policy must be transformed into the
sphere of religion. . . The Lord shall be present in the whole
political sphere where hitherto He was not. . . and the instrument
of His providence to this end shall be none other than the Polish
nation.
One of the two--either the sanctified future of humanity
shall be forfeited, or the life of Poland shall be the condition
of its fulfilment. The only word, the word of Christ, shall
either give forth no further fruits, or the violence committed
against that sacred word shall last no longer. Such is the
truth, but no more a truth of a worldly order, only of God.
Therefore I call it a religion.
Let the conscience of each Pole be convinced of this truth.
Let him grasp with his mind what hitherto he has only felt
with his heart.
These are the principles that led Krasinski to his
song of triumph. They explain the rapturous idealiza-
tion of his nation that we find in Dawn and in all the
work that followed it. What language on the lips of
the poet-mystic could be too exalted to sing of her
whose sufferings and death were to prepare the way
for the spiritual re-birth of the world, whose resurrec-
tion, by being the first step towards the universal victory
over political wrong, shall bring humanity to its trans-
formation? Henceforth, "holy Poland," "my holy
one," are the tender and devout titles by which
Krasinski will call the mystic mistress of his heart, the
adored country who is the symbol of his faith.
But Dawn is not only a great national outpouring.
It is one of the most exquisite love poems in literature.
It is dedicated to Delphina Potocka, whose name like-
wise stands above the second pianoforte concerto and
one of the best known valses of the greatest of Polish
musicians. Etherealized as Krasinski's Beatrice, linked
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? 230 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
with him in one common grief for their nation, she is
in the poem no mere beloved woman, but well-nigh a
mystic part of his nationalism.
And yet again no heart could have conceived such
an apotheosis of pain and hope, of victory over the
powers of darkness, that had not itself first passed
through the sorrows of death. We know, if only from
its opening stanzas, that Dawn commemorates Kra-
sinski's spiritual fall and resurrection: and throughout
the poem we might be reading, even in those passages
that apparently speak only to Poland, the language of
impassioned guidance to a tempest-tossed soul. Much
as the mysticism of Sion in the Hebrew prophecies
applies to a personal need, a personal experience, so,
not only Dawn, but the Psalms of the Future and
Resurrecturis, appeal with extraordinary appositeness to
every heart. We have seen that the Anonymous Poet
directed his principles of political morality entirely by
those of individual morality. In the same manner the
national spirituality and the spirituality of the unit is
with him identical.
In the beautiful lines of his soul's autobiography
that open Dawn, Krasinski tells us how he was driven
by his enemies from his country to wander on alien
soil, hearing from afar the satanic cries of those who
had forged the chains of Poland.
At first I trusted that the God of pitying love, proud to the
proud, to the faithful full of faith; at first I trusted after days
but few He would send avenging angels from above, and burst
that grave which stands before the world. But the days passed
by, and passed away the years. In vain dawn struggled with
the blinded strength of night. No sun arose above the sainted
tomb, and ever more abased did this earth of ours become.
Then sank my soul into that chaos of doubt where all light is
changed into eternal night, where the highest works of courage
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? Dawn
231
like mouldering corpses rot, where the victories of ages in
heaped up ruins lie. And from all the cycle of those lived out
days one inscription standeth: There is no hope here.
Ah, I dwelt, dwelt long in that abyss, driven by wild rage
and despair that knew no shore. And death to me would then
have been but my second death. Like Dante, during life, I
passed through hell. But to aid me also a lady hastened down,
at whose very look the evil spirits fear. Me too an angel from
the precipice redeemed; and I too had a Beatrice of my own.
Oh, beautiful as she, from this world of gloom thou didst
not wing thy way, leaving me alone, and ascend to heaven to
dwell there, heavenly, without pain. Oh, beautiful as she, thou
wert more Christian far! For there where sorrow groweth,
there where tears are birth, there thou with thy brother
remainedst on this earth. Together walked we wearing one
self-same crown of thorns. Blood from my hands with blood
empurpled thine. And the same empoisoned draught of one
hellish spring we did drink together, oh, Beatrice of mine!
And yet, and yet my groaning and thy sighs, mingled,
flowing in each other, they passed away to song. From two
sorrows linked in bridal of the soul, one only voice was raised
--and oh, that voice was joy. Ah, joyousness of faith, ah,
mighty strength of hope, that into my heart returned from thy
look! Thus when clouds of darkness in the heavens, filled
with tears, gather to each other for aerial obsequies, from
their weeping by a roll of thunder sudden light is riven:
and the mist becomes the golden house of God.
And so this song, oh, sister, I open with thy name. Oh,
be linked with me for ever by the ring of one memory and
one love. Here we shall die, but the song that dieth not shall
return some day, true to me and thee, like an angel guardian
to watch us sleeping in our graves. And perchance the
moment cometh when, in the time of all the souls, we shall
rise, but no more in fleshly prison, rise once more united by
the chain of its harmony, and in the memory of human hearts
shall live, as a soul redeemed with a soul redeemed, pure and
shining forth and sanctified.
The scene of the series of lyrics that make up
Dawn is the lake of Como, on whose shores Krasinski
had spent some time in 1840, and where he had
probably begun his poem.
Albeit Krasinski often rises to heights of impersonal
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? 232 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
rapture he seldom speaks the language of pure joy. He
had indeed small reason in his life to do so. But in the
first lyric of Dawn high hopes for his country, love for
a woman, the beauty that surrounded him, all make up
one harmony of rejoicing in God, nature, man. He
and his Beatrice are in a boat upon the lake. The
snow-tipped mountains rise, peak upon peak, into the
Italian skies. Vines and roses cling about their slopes.
"There is one beauty, there is one God," is the
poet's cry. A few stars tremble in the skies. The
moon is rising over the Alps. On the boat stands
Beatrice, her hands on her harp. Her face, inspired,
shines as an angel's. Against the translucency of the
waves and the blue background of the sky, her figure,
silver in a web of moonlight, seems rapt to heaven.
Thou with me and we alone.
On the path with light all laden
Ever onward floats my boat.
Oh, the angels cannot feel
What I feel now in this hour.
Sister mine, to me it seemeth
That our holy one ariseth
At this moment from the coffin.
Ever further we are guided
By the moon across the waters.
Let us float, float thus unending
To peace--to light--to blue--to distance.
Waves are mirrors, mountains phantoms.
Heaven and earth are but one land.
What is real is slowly changing
To the world of the ideal,
To a dream of silver, crystal.
Let me dream, oh, let me dream.
But the shadow of sorrow soon steals back into
Krasinski's song. A son's bereavement of his mother
again breaks forth. He bids Beatrice be steadfast, for:
We raise our eyes on high, and when we see this nature,
1
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? Dawn
233
m it, beyond it we feel--God. In the changing sufferings of
this life, clasping each other by,the hand, in that suffering and
beyond it we feel--God.
We are the children of a mother slain,
We who never have beheld
How the light in mother's eyes
Shines as an angel's on her child.
Pray with me, oh, sister mine,
Pray, kneel in humility.
Gaze on high with piercing boldness
As the orphaned child may gaze.
Look upon that harp unending,
Where the moon, the stars, the suns,
Cling as keys all motionless.
From its depths and highest summits
Strings of light and strings of azure
Quiver, stretched to space unmeasured.
O'er those strings the spirit wanders,
On those strings the spirit playeth,
In that song alone it resteth:
That song--earth's harmony and peace.
One name is missing from this great harmony of
the universe, one ray absent from the symphony of
light. Beatrice must pray that God shall restore that j
lost name of Poland.
As God is in heaven so will He necessarily give us our
second body. For we have fulfilled the test of the grave. Our
right is resurrection. To-day or to-morrow Thou wilt give it,
Lord! Oh, Thou wilt give it for Thy justice' sake; not because
Thou owest it to us, but to Thyself.
When I spoke thus thou wert kneeling,
Wailing with thy harp's stringed wailing;
For thou leanedst thy snow-white forehead
On the strings the moon made shiver
All around in streams of gold.
And thus kneeling thou wert sighing.
Pray, oh, sister, with thy sighing.
God knows well that in this day
Sighing is thy country's name.
The poet then proceeds to his favourite theory, the
only one by which he could explain his nation's fate,
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? 234 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
that Poland is the victim for the world's political
redemption, and that love and self-sacrifice are the
condition of life.
Think you then that she who loveth,
And that dieth she Shall perish?
To your eyes, to eyes dust laden,
Not to self, nor to all life.
Who dies in sacrificing self,
Floweth into lives of others,
Dwells in human hearts in secret:
With each day, each little moment,
Groweth living in that grave,
Even as God Who is in heaven,
Gives to all and gives herself,
Xet her strength is not diminished1.
Long invisible remaining,
Ever heard in depths of hearts,
She with fire must burn their stains,
Melt with tears the soul's hard boulders:
By the grave's toils, by its sorrows,
By the harmonious song of death,
She, although herself dismembered,
Shall join all peoples in one love.
Ah, in vain you dream your dream,
Mortals who would take away
Life from that which is immortal.
You have wounded but the body.
Know you not that love and death
In the spirit world are one?
He on earth is everlasting
i Who with death gives birth to life:
He who with his life gives death
When he dies shall rise no more.
Krasinski inherited the strong idealism of the Polish
race. He had no more mercy for the materialist and
the Pharisee than he had for the tyrant and executioner.
To these the above passage is addressed: and now he
1 This idea Krasinski had developed fully in The Treatise of the Trinity,
arguing from the fact that as God in giving out of Himself in His creation
of the finite detracts nothing from His all Being, so in our far off way what
we give of ourselves we rather gain than lose.
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? Dawn 235
v
pours upon them, standing as they do in the way of
humanity's moral progress, all the invectives of a
generous wrath. Again he turns to Beatrice. He bids
her no longer weep. Before the moon sets he will show
her a miracle that is "above oppression, above pain. "
And so begin the three visions of Dawn.
"Knowest thou"--he speaks to Beatrice--"the love which
eternally lures the soul to the land of memory? Does the cry
of the angel of home call thee by night, and bid thine eyes
gaze on the living faces of those long since dead?
"Knowest thou that dumb, winter steppe where in their
graves the spirits of our fathers sleep? "
It is lit by no stars, only by the ghost-like face of
the moon. There is nothing but the white, desolate
steppe, with the graves that alone stand out black from
the snow. They seem to wander--the poet and Beatrice
--in the endless night of a dream.
'Neath the steppe is mournful murmuring.
All the graveyard trembles, living.
From the graves blow prayers and wailings.
Somewhere swords are rattling hollow.
Clash of armour stern I hear,
As if our fathers, to this moment
Life remembering, craving glory,
Now within their tombs are turning,
On their sides, for they are dreaming
In death's sleep of Poland's sorrow.
Lo, each grave is opened widely,
Giving thee the dead again.
Pallid army of our fathers,
Kings of old, and lords of council,
Warriors and soldiers' leaders,
Gather closely all around thee.
The cemetery of ice and gravestones
To Diet, army, Poland changeth.
The "spark of the spirit," the old splendour of the
Polish senator, the courage and contempt of slavery of
an ancient race, still shine on those dead faces through
the corruption of the grave.
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? 236 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
I beheld them. I wept sorely
In that white land of my dreams.
I beheld them, and before them
Even as falls a corpse I fell.
At their feet I bowed my forehead,
And to them I stretched my hands.
There with tears, cries, my heart's passion,
Asked I them of Poland's death,
I, born after Poland's death.
Wherefore life in life's short moment
Did they squander with such pride,
That nothing to their sons remaineth
Nor of power nor of possession;
In the stead of mother country
But a torn dismembered corpse?
Scarce I spoke: and lo! their armour
Rattled with a hollow music.
From all breasts a cry was uttered,
All those eyes that once were dead
From beneath their helms as torches
Flamed upon me. All together
Their right hands were stretched on high,
Veiling with their cloud the moonlight.
'Here, before, behind, beside me,
Stand they in a mighty crowd.
Hear I on all sides their breathing,
And their scornful laughter hear,
Till they tore my heart asunder
With their scorn: even heart of steel
Must have broken.
He implores the spirits to take their anger from
him, to tell their son, as only they can, "the holy
truth. " He is answered by the poet's favourite national
hero, the Grand Hetman Czarniecki, the Polish cham-
pion who drove the Swedish conqueror out of Poland
in the seventeenth century, and who won equal renown
against the Russians and Cossacks. He tells the poet
that he grew not from ease or pleasure, but from pain.
"God lays down His promises to those whom He makes
suffer. God's grace drove us into these pathless ways.
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? Dawn
237
For to my country He gave rather to die than live
ignobly. " If Krasinski's ancestors had, following in
"the steps of the world," supported "that edifice which
stands about Poland," that is, the lust for annexation
and disregard of political morality on the part of
Poland's neighbours to which she owes her dismember-
ment, Poland would now be "not a nation but only a
shop. Eternally from all sides fate was driving us
across the open fields of history to a higher lot, to that
Poland which shall be. " Krasinski always italicizes this
phrase. "We walked thither in the ways of old. To-
day you are walking thither by the ways of youth.
From our blood and from our faults, before this age
shall pass away, shall rise the one people of the peoples.
Bless the faults then of your fathers. "
In this passage, perplexing to those who have not
followed the trend of Polish history, Krasinski is draw-
ing upon the historical mysticism which is also very
marked in the writings of Mickiewicz. The constitu-
tion of Poland, anarchical and subversive of order as
most English writers are fond of terming it, was founded
on spiritual political principles that were almost un-
recognized in the other European states. The duty of
every citizen to take his share in the government of his
nation was the origin of the necessary unanimity of
vote that led to the liberum veto with its disastrous
results. To the legislator of the hour it was incon-
ceivable that a citizen of the Polish Republic should
use his right of protest for any reason except the
benefit of his country. The cause of the internal dis-
orders of Poland, when not fomented by foreign
intriguers, is to seek in the love of liberty carried by
the Pole of the past to excess. In obedience to her
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? 238 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
high conception of the obligations of political morality,
to her faith in the good will of the states that sur-
rounded her, her disbelief in the possibility of such a
violation of moral law as the partition of a living
country, Poland neglected her military defences so that
when the hour of her end sounded she had practically
no armies to defend her against Russia, Austria and
Prussia combined1. Wars of conquest, assassination of
the sovereign, never entered into Poland's scheme.
All this throws light on Krasinski's exaltation of his
country. And yet love never blinded his eyes to her
failings. Had it done so he could not have been the
great national teacher that he was.
The Hetman has spoken and sinks back into the
tomb. The steppe shakes; the sky dissolves; all pass
into the unsounded abysses of the poet's soul. But the
voice of the dead with the message it uttered still
trembles in the listener's ear.
The two dreamers are again upon the lake. Mists
shroud the mountains. The moon has sunk within
them. But:
'Tis no wind that there is whispering.
Someone softly weepeth, sigheth.
O'er the shores a wail is spreading.
On the night wind through the heavens
Thousand wailings run towards us.
All the bank, the crags and mountains,
Are resounding, one deep prayer.
'' M ighty God! " cries the poet. '<<Can this be ? " for
he sees once more the spirits of his fathers.
1 See among others Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves. E. Starczewski,
LEurope et la Pologne. Paris, 1913. In consideration of the profound
ignorance concerning Poland in our country it is necessary to point out
that modern Polish policy, while retaining its high ideals, has become the
most practical of activities.
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? Dawn
239
Beyond the waters, there before us, J2.
As light dreams, light multitudes
On the rocks and crags are floating.
As will-o'-the-wisps, as wavering flamelets,
Now they rise, and now they fall.
Strike, oh, sister, strike thy strings.
Let the song more surely lure them.
Play in all thy music's thunder,
Play them: Poland hath not perished \
With harp and voice, weep, pray, and madden!
The song our nation sings shall surely
Draw them here from far off distance.
Is it miracle or mirage?
Sparkles in thy hands the music.
All the harp is glimmering, burning.
Each note from the strings unwinding
Shakes the air in fiery flaming.
Above the waves the song is burning.
To the ghosts it runs, it driveth,
Flaming ever and ever ringing.
In the original this passage is written in short
nervous lines, imitating the voice of the harp, and
quivering with the beautiful shades of harmonies and
echoes to which the Polish language, with its peculiarly
rich onomatopoeia, lends itself in a manner that is im-
possible to reproduce in English. I have only been
able to attempt to render its sense, not its sounds.
It is interesting to notice the connection here of
light and music of which we have heard much in
these latter days. We meet it also in Mickiewicz's
Improvization in the Third Part of The Ancestors1.
He, we know, took it from Saint-Martin.
"To the flashing of those sounds" the phantoms
advance across the waves.
1 Poland hath not perished was the war-song of the Polish legions
fighting under Napoleon, and has ever since remained one of the most
beloved and soul-stirring of Polish national songs.
2 See my translation in Adam Mickiewicz, the National Poet of Poland.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:09 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89102083045 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 240 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
There the horsetails, there the standards,
Fluttering snow white plumes and crowns1,
There the Catholic cross uplifted,
Shields and coats of arms and ensigns,
And a host of swords and helms.
Seest thou that face angelic?
As a star upon the darkness
On high, on high, she floats, she rises,
Wanes, and glimmers, quivers, flames.
Lo!