Classic Poem

  Poland has fallen! Heaven! how long
  Shall fraud and tyranny be strong?
How long shall Russia's impious lord be free
  To trample on the hearts of men,
That he may turn, with smiles of savage glee,
  To revel in his Arctic den?
What! must the sword of righteous vengeance sleep?
Must the warm heart its even tenor keep?
  And shroud its feelings from the light,
  And veil its horror and affright,
  Lest we should rouse the Muscovite?
  Alas! how great is England's fall;
  Was it for this she smote the Gaul?
  And poured her blood, like summer rain,
  Upon the burning fields of Spain?
  Is it to this barbaric race
  That the fierce Corsican gave place?
  Alas! old Warsaw's crumbling wall
  Startled no echo in its fall:
  Though Poland flung her banners forth,
  Against the millions of the north;
  And faced the slaves, who rushed to slay,
  Like some proud forest-stag at bay,
  In foreign lands, no answering shout
  From nations burst in thunder out;
  No people started from their rest,
  No trumpet sounded in the west;
  That high and holy enterprise
  Awoke no feeling, but surprise.
  The hatred ceasing but with life,
  The fierce roar of the rapid strife,
The smoke, the death-fires covering all around,
  As though from some volcano cast,
The heavy tramp, that shook the heated ground,
  As if an earthquake past,
 The axe of vengeance raised and bare,
   The despot's panting haste to smite,
 The high hearts breaking in despair,
   As the last column sunk in fight,
  On Europe's languid senses fell,
  Like a theatric spectacle;
  Yea! as in some luxurious room,
   We fix our rapt and earnest eyes
  On scenes, which some great limner's sight,
  In darkness saw by its own light,
  Wild paintings full of death and gloom,
  Like dreams arrested in their flight;
   Yet feel no human sympathies
  For the pale forms within, which seem
  Convulsed in suffering's fierce extreme,
  So gazed the sons of Europe all
  On that brave lands disastrous fall.
   Alone they stood, alone they fell,
Sprung from those knights, to God, and Europe true,
Whose warcry well the Turkish Spahi knew,
Whose coursers, as the tameless eagle, flew,
Whose spears, like fire set to grass, broke through
   The masses of the infidel;
  And gave to death the turbaned lord
  Of many an Asiatic horde,
  When from the East, with fierce acclaim,
  The children of the Crescent came,
  Like locusts warping on the wind,
  To leave despair and death behind.
   Alone they stood, alone they fell;
  For many a month, the cannon's roar
   Boomed from old Warsaw's citadel;
  For many a month, with earthquake sound,
  The hoofs of charging horsemen tore
   The bloody turf around:
  And still untamed, from day to day,
  They kept the northern wolf away,
   But help in none was found.
  Instead of filling heaven and earth
  With the loud trumpet's awful mirth;
  Instead of pouring to the breeze
  A shout, like the awakened seas;
  Instead of pressing to the strife,
  Like lightnings bursting into life;
  Instead of leaping on the foe
  As leaps the eager lawine-snow;
  All fawned upon the man of blood;
  All fawned upon him, as he stood
  With Poland's sacred gore bedewed:
  Such was Europe's gratitude!
Even now the threat of vengeance is deferred,
 No people breathes a single word;
   Though still within that stately city,
 The sob of breaking hearts is heard,
   For the tyrant has no pity;
  The buoyant hope, the keen desire,
  Which filled the souls of all with fire;
  Now to the eye doth seem,
  The shadow of an unremembered dream;
 Silent, and cold, like some deep frozen stream,
   Which none would deem to be the rill,
 That in the golden summer's beam,
 With gurgling rush, and dazzling gleam,
   Leapt joyously from hill to hill.
  Alike on every spirit press
   Deep lassitude and hopelessness;
   Alike, by day and night, on all
   The Tartar's iron scourges fall.
   The vassal, on the ravaged wold
   Sighs for the glorious deeds of old:
   He sighs in secret, to behold
   The downfall of his country's pride
   Wherewith, he was identified;
He mourns, because his native lord,
   The son of an heroic name,
   (Now fading, like an unfed flame)
   Is forced, even as the idle foam
   Shifts in the changing gale, to roam
With crest defaced, and useless sword,
   An exile from his ruined home:
  The warworn noble must endure,
   In bitterness of heart, to see
  The axe of ruthless vengeance laid,
   To his ancestral tree;
  Beneath whose venerable shade,
  In all the pomp of age displayed,
   The peasant slept secure:
  See that young mother, trembling there,
  Pale, as a statue of despair.
  What recks she, that like death around
  The harsh blast strikes the lifeless ground?
  To her intense, and cureless grief,
  Such outward suffering, is relief.
  See! how with feeble steps and slow,
  She tracks, along the frozen snow,
  The crowded wain, wherein is borne,
  From arms of clasping fondness torn,
  The child of some historic stem,
  Who might have worn a diadem.
  Perchance the fairest flower of all,
  The life of some ancestral hall,
  She moved, like light, to cheer and bless,
  A very star of loveliness:
  Who tore that child of hope away?
  Who turned those locks of gold to grey?
  Who pierced that heart of love from far,
  And outraged nature thus? The Czar!
  Alas! alas! for Poland's fate;
  Her castles now are desolate;
  Each city, is a place of tears,
  The home of woe, and killing fears;
  O'er her wide meadows, like a blight,
  Hath swept the ruthless Muscovite:
 Her bravest children wake to weep
  Their ruined country's woe,
Where the cold skies of northern Asia steep
  The trackless plains in snow:
  On wilds above, in mines below,
   The mark of servile scorn;
  Forbid o'er Poland's fate to sigh,
  Too proud to sink, too brave to die,
   From Poland, and from glory, torn,
   They live, forgotten, and forlorn.
No more, as in the days of old, no more
 Does God fight visibly for martyrs here;
Our dim eyes reach not to the happy shore,
 Beyond time's clouded ocean moaning near;
Therefore it is, that round my spirit cling,
Dejection deep as death, forlorn dismay,
And heaviness, that will not pass away.
  We cannot in our blindness see,
  What will, what ought to be;
We cannot soar on angel's wing,
Above the atmosphere of doubt and gloom,
Which makes this wide earth darker than the tomb,
  Into that upper air,
  Where all is bright and fair;
The soul is fettered to a heavy doom,
  Which it must learn to bear:
But still, the eyes of Heaven do not sleep,
The Wisdom of the universe is deep;
Though all around be dark, 'tis not for man
The footsteps of the Lord to scan:
What though we cannot shape the lightning's way,
To scare the tiger from his prey?
  What though we dare not say,
That heaven will rain down vengeance from above,
  On those who draw the sword to slay?
It is enough to know, that God is love,
  And wiser than the sons of clay.