THE POWER OF RUSSIA.
So all this gallant blood has gushed in vain!
And Poland by the Northern Condor’s beak
And talons torn, lies prostrated again.
O, British patriots, that were wont to speak
Once loudly on this theme, now hushed or meek!
O, heartless men of Europe—Goth and Gaul!
Cold, adder-deaf to Poland’s dying shriek;—
That saw the world’s last land of heroes fall—
The brand of burning shame is on you all—all—all!
But this is not the drama’s closing act;
Its tragic curtain must uprise anew.
Nations, mute accessaries to the fact!
That Upas-tree of power, whose fostering dew
Was Polish blood, has yet to cast o’er you
The lengthening shadow of its head elate—
A deadly shadow, darkening nature’s hue.
To all that’s hallowed, righteous, pure, and great,
Wo! wo! when they are reached by Russia’s withering hate.
Russia, that on his throne of adamant,
Consults what nation’s breast shall next be gored:
He on Polonia’s Golgotha will plant
His standard fresh; and, horde succeeding horde,
On patriot tomb-stones he will whet the sword,
For more stupendous slaughters of the free.
Then Europe’s realms, when their best blood is poured,
Shall miss thee, Poland! as they bend the knee,
All—all in grief, but none in glory likening thee.
Why smote ye not the giant whilst he reeled?
O, fair occasion, gone for ever by!
To have locked his lances in their northern field,
Innocuous as the phantom chivalry
That flames and hurtles from yon boreal sky!
Now wave thy pennon, Russia, o’er the land
Once Poland; build thy bristling castles high;
Dig dungeon’s deep; for Poland’s wrested brand
Is now a weapon new to widen thy command—
An awful width! Norwegian woods shall build
His fleets; the Swede his vassal, and the Dane:
The glebe of fifty kingdoms shall be tilled
To feed his dazzling, desolating train,
Camped sumless, ’twixt the Black and Baltic main:
Brute hosts, I own; but Sparta could not write,
And Rome, half-barbarous, bound Achaia’s chain:
So Russia’s spirit, midst Sclavonic night,
Burns with a fire more dread than all your polished light.
But Russia’s limbs (so blinded statesmen say)
Are crude, and too colossal to cohere.
O, lamentable weakness! reckoning weak
The stripling Titan, strengthening year by year.
What implement lacks he for war’s career,
That grows on earth, or in its floods and mines,
(Eighth sharer of the inhabitable sphere)
Whom Persia bows to, China ill confines,
And India’s homage waits, when Albion’s star declines?
But time will teach the Russ, e’en conquering
Has handmaid arts: ay, ay, the Russ will woo
All sciences that speed Bellona’s car,
All murder’s tactic arts, and win them too;
But never holier Muses shall imbue
His breast, that’s made of nature’s basest clay:
The sabre, knout, and dungeon’s vapour blue
His laws and ethics: far from him away
Are all the lovely nine that breath but freedom’s day.
Say, e’en his serfs, half humanised, should learn
Their human rights,—will Mars put out his flame
In Russian bosoms? no, he’ll bid them burn
A thousand years for nought but martial fame,
Like Romans:—yet forgive me, Roman name!
Rome could impart what Russia never can;
Proud civic rights to salve submission’s shame.
Our strife is coming; but in freedom’s van
The Polish Eagle’s fall is big with fate to man.
Proud bird of old! Mohammed’s moon recoiled
Before thy swoop: had we been timely bold,
That swoop, still free, had stunned the Russ, and foiled
Earth’s new oppressors, as it foiled her old.
Now thy majestic eyes are shut and cold:
And colder still Polonia’s children find
The sympathetic hands, that we outhold.
But, Poles, when we are gone, the world will mind,
Ye bore the brunt of fate, and bled for humankind.
So hallowedly have ye fulfilled your part,
My pride repudiates e’en the sigh that blends
With Poland’s name—name written on my heart.
My heroes, my grief-consecrated friends!
Your sorrow, in nobility, transcends
Your conqueror’s joy: his cheek may blush; but shame
Can tinge not yours, though exile’s tear descends;
Nor would ye change your conscience, cause and name,
For his, with all his wealth, and all his felon fame.
Thee, Niemciewitz,[90] whose song of stirring power
The Czar forbids to sound in Polish lands;
Thee, Czartoryski, in thy banished bower,
The patricide, who in thy palace stands,
May envy; proudly may Polonia’s bands
Throw down their swords at Europe’s feet in scorn,
Saying—“Russia, from the metal of these brands
Shall forge the fetters of your sons unborn;
Our setting star is your misfortune’s rising morn.”
[90] This venerable man, the most popular and influential of Polish poets, and president of the Academy of Warsaw, was in London when this poem was written; he was seventy-four years old; but his noble spirit was rather mellowed than decayed by age. He was the friend of Fox, Kosciusko, and Washington. Rich in anecdote like Franklin, he bore also a striking resemblance to him in countenance.
REULLURA.[91]
Star of the morn and eve,
Reullura shone like thee,
And well for her might Aodh grieve,
The dark-attired Culdee.[92]
Peace to their shades! the pure Culdees
Were Albyn’s earliest priests of God,
Ere yet an island of her seas
By foot of Saxon monk was trod,
Long ere her churchmen by bigotry
Were barred from holy wedlock’s tie.
’Twas then that Aodh, famed afar,
In Iona preached the word with power,
And Reullura, beauty’s star,
Was the partner of his bower.
But, Aodh, the roof lies low,
And the thistle-down waves bleaching,
And the bat flits to and fro
Where the Gael once heard thy preaching,
And fall’n is each columned aisle
Where the chiefs and the people knelt.
’Twas near that temple’s goodly pile
That honoured of men they dwelt.
For Aodh was wise in the sacred law,
And bright Reullura’s eyes oft saw
The veil of fate uplifted.
Alas, with what visions of awe
Her soul in that hour was gifted—
When pale in the temple and faint,
With Aodh she stood alone
By the statue of an aged Saint!
Fair sculptured was the stone,
It bore a crucifix;
Fame said it once had graced
A Christian temple, which the Picts
In the Britons’ land laid waste:
The Pictish men, by St. Columb taught,
Had hither the holy relic brought.
Reullura eyed the statue’s face,
And cried, “It is he shall come,
Even he in this very place,
To avenge my martyrdom.
“For, woe to the Gael people!
Ulvfagre is on the main,
And Iona shall look from tower and steeple
On the coming ships of the Dane;
And, dames and daughters, shall all your locks
With the spoiler’s grasp entwine?
No! some shall have shelter in caves and rocks,
And the deep sea shall be mine.
Baffled by me shall the Dane return,
And here shall his torch in the temple burn,
Until that holy man shall plough
The waves from Innisfail.[93]
His sail is on the deep e’en now,
And swells to the southern gale.”
“Ah! knowest thou not, my bride,”
The holy Aodh said,
“That the Saint whose form we stand beside
Has for ages slept with the dead?”
“He liveth, he liveth,” she said again,
“For the span of his life tenfold extends
Beyond the wonted years of men.
He sits by the graves of well-loved friends
That died ere thy grandsire’s grandsire’s birth;
The oak is decayed with old age on earth,
Whose acorn-seed had been planted by him;
And his parents remember the day of dread
When the sun on the cross looked dim,
And the graves gave up their dead.
“Yet preaching from clime to clime,
He hath roamed the earth for ages,
And hither he shall come in time
When the wrath of the heathen rages,
In time a remnant from the sword—
Ah! but a remnant to deliver;
Yet, bless’d be the name of the Lord!
His martyrs shall go into bliss for ever.
Lochlin,[94] appalled, shall put up her steel,
And thou shalt embark on the bounding keel;
Safe shalt thou pass through her hundred ships,
With the Saint and a remnant of the Gael,
And the Lord will instruct thy lips
To preach in Innisfail.”
The sun, now about to set,
Was burning o’er Tiriee,
And no gathering cry rose yet
O’er the isles of Albyn’s sea,
Whilst Reullura saw far rowers dip
Their oars beneath the sun,
And the phantom of many a Danish ship,
Where ship there yet was none.
And the shield of alarm[95] was dumb,
Nor did their warning till midnight come,
When watch-fires burst from across the mair
From Rona and Uist and Skye,
To tell that the ships of the Dane
And the red-haired slayers were nigh.
Our islesmen arose from slumbers,
And buckled on their arms;
But few, alas! were their numbers
To Lochlin’s mailèd swarms.
And the blade of the bloody Norse
Has filled the shores of the Gael
With many a floating corse,
And with many a woman’s wail.
They have lighted the islands with ruin’s torch,
And the holy men of Iona’s church
In the temple of God lay slain;
All but Aodh, the last Culdee,
But bound with many an iron chain,
Bound in that church was he.
And where is Aodh’s bride?
Rocks of the ocean flood!
Plunged she not from your heights in pride,
And mocked the men of blood?
Then Ulvfagre and his bands
In the temple lighted their banquet up,
And the print of their blood-red hands
Was left on the altar cup.
’Twas then that the Norseman to Aodh said,
“Tell where thy church’s treasure’s laid,
Or I’ll hew thee limb from limb.”
As he spoke the bell struck three,
And every torch grew dim
That lighted their revelry.
But the torches again burnt bright,
And brighter than before,
When an aged man of majestic height
Entered the temple door.
Hushed was the revellers’ sound,
They were struck as mute as the dead,
And their hearts were appalled by the very sound
Of his footstep’s measured tread.
Nor word was spoken by one beholder,
While he flung his white robe back on his shoulder
And stretching his arm—as eath
Unriveted Aodh’s bands,
As if the gyves had been a wreath
Of willows in his hands.
All saw the stranger’s similitude
To the ancient statue’s form;
The Saint before his own image stood,
And grasped Ulvfagre’s arm.
Then uprose the Danes at last to deliver
Their chief, and shouting with one accord,
They drew the shaft from its rattling quiver,
They lifted the spear and sword,
And levelled their spears in rows.
But down went axes and spears and bows,
When the Saint with his crosier signed,
The archer’s hand on the string was stopt,
And down, like reeds laid flat by the wind,
Their lifted weapons dropt.
The Saint then gave a signal mute,
And though Ulvfagre willed it not,
He came and stood at the statue’s foot,
Spell-riveted to the spot,
Till hands invisible shook the wall,
And the tottering image was dashed
Down from its lofty pedestal.
On Ulvfagre’s helm it crashed—
Helmet, and skull, and flesh, and brain,
It crushed as millstone crushes the grain.
Then spoke the Saint, whilst all and each
Of the Heathen trembled round,
And the pauses amidst his speech
Were as awful as the sound:
“Go back, ye wolves, to your dens,” he cried,
“And tell the nations abroad,
How the fiercest of your herd has died
That slaughtered the flock of God.
Gather him bone by bone,
And take with you o’er the flood
The fragments of that avenging stone
That drank his heathen blood.
These are the spoils from Iona’s sack,
The only spoils ye shall carry back;
For the hand that uplifteth spear or sword
Shall be withered by palsy’s shock,
And I come in the name of the Lord
To deliver a remnant of his flock.”
A remnant was called together,
A doleful remnant of the Gael,
And the Saint in the ship that had brought him hither
Took the mourners to Innisfail.
Unscathed they left Iona’s strand,
When the opal morn first flushed the sky,
For the Norse dropt spear, and bow and brand,
And looked on them silently;
Safe from their hiding places came
Orphans and mothers, child and dame:
But alas! when the search for Reullura spread,
No answering voice was given,
For the sea had gone o’er her lovely head,
And her spirit was in Heaven.
[91] Reullura, in Gaelic, signifies “beautiful star.”
[92] The Culdees were the primitive clergy of Scotland, and apparently her only clergy from the sixth to the eleventh century. They were of Irish origin, and their monastery on the island of Iona, or Icolmkill, was the seminary of Christianity in North Britain. Presbyterian writers have wished to prove them to have been a sort of Presbyters, strangers to the Roman Church and Episcopacy. It seems to be established that they were not enemies to Episcopacy;—but that they were not slavishly subjected to Rome like the clergy of later periods, appears by their resisting the Papal ordonnances respecting the celibacy of religious men, on which account they were ultimately displaced by the Scottish sovereigns to make way for more Popish canons.
[93] Ireland.
[94] Denmark.
[95] Striking the shield was an ancient mode of convocation to war among the Gael.