LINES ON POLAND.
And have I lived to see thee sword in hand
Uprise again immortal Polish Land!—
Whose flag brings more than chivalry to mind,
And leaves the tri-color in shade behind;—
A theme for uninspirèd lips too strong;
That swells my heart beyond the power of song:—
Majestic men, whose deeds have dazzled faith,
Ah! yet your fate’s suspense arrests my breath;
Whilst, envying bosoms bared to shot and steel,
I feel the more that fruitlessly I feel.
Poles! with what indignation I endure
Th’ half-pitying servile mouths that call you poor;
Poor! is it England mocks you with her grief,
That hates, but dares not chide, th’ Imperial Thief?
France with her soul beneath a Bourbon’s thrall,
And Germany that has no soul at all,—
States quailing at the giant overgrown,
Whom dauntless Poland grapples with alone?
No, ye are rich in fame e’en whilst ye bleed:
We cannot aid you—we are poor indeed!
In Fate’s defiance—in the world’s great eye,
Poland has won her Immortality!
The Butcher, should he reach her bosom now,
Could tear not Glory’s garland from her brow;
Wreathed, filleted, the victim falls renowned,
And all her ashes would be holy ground!
But turn, my soul, from presages so dark:
Great Poland’s spirit is a deathless spark
That’s fanned by Heaven to mock the Tyrant’s rage:
She, like the eagle, will renew her age,
And fresh historic plumes of Fame put on,—
Another Athens after Marathon,—
Where eloquence shall fulmine, arts refine,
Bright as her arms that now in battle shine.
Come—should the heavenly shock my life destroy
And shut its flood-gates with excess of joy;
Come but the day when Poland’s fight is won—
And on my grave-stone shine the morrow’s sun—
The day that sees Warsaw’s cathedral glow
With endless ensigns ravished from the foe,—
Her women lifting their fair hands with thanks,
Her pious warriors kneeling in their ranks,
The scutcheoned walls of high heraldic boast,
The odorous altar’s elevated host,
The organ sounding through the aisle’s long glooms,
The mighty dead seen sculptured o’er their tombs;
(John, Europe’s saviour—Poniatowski’s fair
Resemblance—Kosciusko’s shall be there;)
The tapered pomp—the halleluiah’s swell,
Shall o’er the soul’s devotion cast a spell,
Till visions cross the rapt enthusiast’s glance,
And all the scene becomes a waking trance.
Should Fate put far—far off that glorious scene,
And gulfs of havoc interpose between,
Imagine not, ye men of every clime,
Who act, or by your sufferance share the crime—
Your brother Abel’s blood shall vainly plead
Against the “deep damnation” of the deed.
Germans ye view its horror and disgrace
With cold phosphoric eyes and phlegm of face.
Is Allemagne profound in science, lore,
And minstrel art?—her shame is but the more
To doze and dream by governments oppressed,
The spirit of a book-worm in each breast.
Well can ye mouth fair Freedom’s classic line,
And talk of Constitutions o’er your wine:
But all your vows to break the tyrant’s yoke
Expire in Bacchanalian song and smoke:
Heavens! can no ray of foresight pierce the leads
And mystic metaphysics of your heads,
To show the self-same grave, Oppression delves
For Poland’s rights, is yawning for yourselves!
See, whilst the Pole, the vanguard aid of France,
Has vaulted on his barb and couched the lance,
France turns from her abandoned friends afresh,[88]
And soothes the Bear that prowls for patriot flesh,
Buys, ignominious purchase! short repose,
With dying curses and the groans of those
That served, and loved, and put in her their trust.
Frenchmen! the dead accuse you from the dust—
Brows laurelled—bosoms marked with many a scar
For France—that wore her Legion’s noblest star,
Cast dumb reproaches from the field of Death
On Gallic honour; and this broken faith
Has robbed you more of Fame—the life of life,—
Than twenty battles lost in glorious strife!
And what of England—Is she steeped so low
In poverty, crest-fallen, and palsied so,
That we must sit much wroth, but timorous more,
With murder knocking at our neighbour’s door!—
Not murder masked and cloaked with hidden knife,
Whose owner owes the gallows life for life;
But Public Murder!—that with pomp and gaud,
And royal scorn of Justice walks abroad
To wring more tears and blood than e’er were wrung
By all the culprits Justice ever hung!
We read the diademed Assassin’s vaunt,
And wince, and wish we had not hearts to pant
With useless indignation—sigh, and frown,
But have not hearts to throw the gauntlet down.
If but a doubt hung o’er the grounds of fray,
Or trivial rapine stopped the world’s highway;
Were this some common strife of States embroiled;—
Britannia on the spoiler and the spoiled
Might calmly look, and, asking time to breathe,
Still honourably wear her olive wreath
But this is Darkness combating with Light:
Earth’s adverse Principles for empire fight:
Oppression, that has belted half the globe,
Far as his knout could reach or dagger probe,
Holds reeking o’er our brother freemen slain
That dagger—shakes it at us in disdain;
Talks big to Freedom’s states of Poland’s thrall,
And, trampling one, contemns them one and all.
My Country! colours not thy once proud brow
At this effront?—Hast thou not fleets enow
With Glory’s streamer, lofty as the lark,
Gay fluttering o’er each thunder-bearing bark,
To warm th’ Insulter’s seas with barb’rous blood,
And interdict his flag from Ocean’s flood?
E’en now far off the sea-cliff, where I sing,
I see, my Country, and my Patriot King!
Your ensign glad the deep. Becalmed and slow
A war-ship rides; while Heaven’s prismatic bow
Uprisen behind her on th’ horizon’s base, }
Shines flushing through the tackle, shrouds, and stays, }
And wraps her giant form in one majestic blaze. }
My soul accepts the omen; Fancy’s eye
Has sometimes a veracious augury:
The Rainbow types Heaven’s promise to my sight;
The Ship, Britannia’s interposing Might!
But if there should be none to aid you, Poles,
Ye’ll but to prouder pitch wind up your souls,
Above example, pity, praise or blame,
To sow and reap a boundless field of Fame.
Ask aid no more from Nations that forget
Your championship—old Europe’s mighty debt.
Though Poland (Lazarus-like) has burst the gloom,
She rises not a beggar from the tomb:
In Fortune’s frown, on Danger’s giddiest brink,
Despair and Poland’s name must never link.
All ills have bounds—plague, whirlwind, fire, and flood:
E’en power can spill but bounded sums of blood.
States caring not what freedom’s price may be,
May late or soon, but must at last be free;
For body-killing tyrants cannot kill
The public soul—the hereditary will
That downward as from sire to son it goes,
By shifting bosoms more intensely glows:
Its heir-loom is the heart, and slaughtered men
Fight fiercer in their orphans o’er again.
Poland recasts—though rich in heroes old,—
Her men in more and more heroic mould:
Her Eagle-ensign best among mankind
Become, and types her eagle-strength of mind:
Her praise upon my faltering lips expires:
Resume it, younger bards, and nobler lyres!
[88] The fact ought to be universally known, that France was indebted to Poland for not being invaded by Russia. When the Duke Constantine fled from Warsaw, he left papers behind him proving that the Russians, after the Parisian events in July, meant to have marched towards Paris, if the Polish insurrection had not prevented them.
LINES
ON THE CAMP HILL, NEAR HASTINGS.
In the deep blue of eve,
Ere the twinkling of stars had begun,
Or the lark took his leave
Of the skies and the sweet setting sun,
I climbed to yon heights,
Where the Norman encamped him of old,[89]
With his bowmen and knights,
And his banner all burnished with gold.
At the Conqueror’s side
There his minstrelsy sat harp in hand,
In pavilion wide;
And they chaunted the deeds of Roland.
Still the ramparted ground
With a vision my fancy inspires,
And I hear the trump sound,
As it marshalled our Chivalry’s sires.
On each turf of that mead
Stood the captors of England’s domains,
That ennobled her breed
And high-mettled the blood of her veins.
Over hauberk and helm
As the sun’s setting splendour was thrown,
Thence they looked o’er a realm—
And to-morrow beheld it their own.
[89] What is called the East Hill at Hastings is crowned with the works of an ancient camp; and it is more than probable it was the spot which William I. occupied between his landing, and the battle which gave him England’s crown. It is a strong position: the works are easily traced.
LINES
WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF LA PEROUSE’S VOYAGES.
Loved Voyager! whose pages had a zest
More sweet than fiction to my wond’ring breast,
When, rapt in fancy, many a boyish day
I tracked his wanderings o’er the watery way,
Roamed round the Aleutian isles in waking dreams,
Or plucked the fleur-de-lys by Jesso’s streams—
Or gladly leaped on that far Tartar strand,
Where Europe’s anchor ne’er had bit the sand,
Where scarce a roving wild tribe crossed the plain,
Or human voice broke nature’s silent reign;
But vast and grassy deserts feed the bear,
And sweeping deer-herds dread no hunter’s snare.
Such young delight his real records brought,
His truth so touched romantic springs of thought,
That all my after-life—his fate and fame
Entwined romance with La Perouse’s name.
Fair were his ships, expert his gallant crews,
And glorious was th’ emprize of La Perouse,—
Humanely glorious! Men will weep for him,
When many a guilty martial fame is dim:
He ploughed the deep to bind no captive’s chain—
Pursued no rapine—strewed no wreck with slain,
And, save that in the deep themselves lie low,
His heroes plucked no wreath from human woe.
’Twas his the earth’s remotest bounds to scan,
Conciliating with gifts barbaric man—
Enrich the world’s contemporaneous mind,
And amplify the picture of mankind.
Far on the vast Pacific—midst those isles,
O’er which the earliest morn of Asia smiles,
He sounded and gave charts to many a shore
And gulf of Ocean new to nautic lore;
Yet he that led Discovery o’er the wave,
Still finds himself an undiscovered grave.
He came not back,—Conjecture’s cheek grew pale,
Year after year—in no propitious gale,
His lilied banner held its homeward way,
And Science saddened at her martyr’s stay.
An age elapsed—no wreck told where or when
The chief went down with all his gallant men,
Or whether by the storm and wild sea flood
He perished, or by wilder men of blood—
The shudd’ring Fancy only guess’d his doom,
And Doubt to Sorrow gave but deeper gloom.
An age elapsed—when men were dead or grey,
Whose hearts had mourned him in their youthful day
Fame traced on Mannicōlo’s shore at last
The boiling surge had mounted o’er his mast.
The islesmen told of some surviving men,
But Christian eyes beheld them ne’er again.
Sad bourne of all his toils—with all his band—
To sleep, wrecked, shroudless, on a savage strand!
Yet what is all that fires a hero’s scorn
Of death?—the hope to live in hearts unborn:
Life to the brave is not its fleeting breath,
But worth—foretasting fame, that follows death.
That worth had La Perouse—that meed he won;
He sleeps—his life’s long stormy watch is done.
In the great deep, whose boundaries and space
He measured, Fate ordained his resting-place;
But bade his fame, like th’ Ocean rolling o’er
His relics—visit every earthly shore.
Fair Science on that Ocean’s azure robe,
Still writes his name in picturing the globe,
And paints—(what fairer wreath could Glory twine?)
His watery course—a world-encircling line.