A POLISH PATRIOTIC HYMN.
In an obscure corner of the Mazarine Library, at Paris, was lately discovered by its director or librarian in chief, Mr. Philarète Chasles, a small black prayer-book; an oblong duodecimo, gilt-edged, although printed on poor gray paper. It was in the Polish tongue, with the exception of the vesper-hymns and some canticles of the church in Latin. No catalogue chronicled its existence, and it was, evidently, a despised waif, rejected as of too little importance to be entitled to a place in the dignified alcoves.
On examination, it was found to contain the following original Latin ode—a remarkable composition in many respects, touchingly beautiful in a simplicity at once tender and vigorous, and an exquisite combination of piety and patriotism.
It was doubtless sung in the churches of Poland about the year 1740, when Europe stood aloof in silent ingratitude to those who, following Sobieski's sword, had saved her from the Turk; when England was of course indifferent to the fate of a Catholic nation; when France was without sympathy for the faithful, and her kings proved then, more than ever, that Catholicity would have been better off without their aid; when Catharine of Russia gilded her cupidity with philosophical maxims, and Frederick of Prussia, called the Great, calumniated those he robbed.
As we read the hymn, we can well imagine the crowd in front of the altar, covered with flowers, in some rude, white-walled village church. They kneel before the infant Jesus in his mother's arms. Peasants in their national costume—a long, white blouse reaching to the knee, the curved sabre in the belt—children, soldiers, women, young girls. They chant one of those peculiarly wild Slavonic rhythms in 6⁄8 or 3⁄8. There, prostrate, with clasped hands, their weeping eyes on the infant Saviour, the child Liberator, they intone these beautiful Latin strophes, a rare specimen of spontaneous and popular poetry:
AD PARVULUM CHRISTUM CONTRA HOSTES PATRIÆ.
1.
Benevolus audi
Quæ tuæ sunt laudi,
O Parvule delicate!
Patriam defende!
Tu solus es agnus
Et fortis et magnus!
Qui perfidum Turcam
Compellis ad furcam!
Patriam! patriam! patriam
Defende!
Mercifully listen to those who praise and implore thee, O tender Infant! Defend our country. Thou alone art the Lamb, alone powerful! alone great! Exterminator of the treacherous Turk. Our country, our country, ah! defend our country.
Barbarous and artificial strophes, perhaps you think? Yes, measured by Lucretius and Virgil, they may be; poor, thin, leonine verses like those of the twelfth century Benedictine monk who wrote,
Gloria factorum temere conceditur horum,
singing verses without prosodial measure, their vehement and rapid rhyme answering for every thing. And yet this learned barbarism, borrowed from the seventh century, from a poetry in ruins, gives life to the ardent flame and the tragic sorrow it expresses. It is a deep cry of anguish from the innermost depths of a stricken people's heart.
We hear the divine and child-like victim invoked in his feebleness by a vanquished nation, and appealed to in his shivering nakedness (et friges et taces) by the oppressed in tears, and these cries form a sad though sublime harmony. The unknown ecclesiastical minstrel—for the poetry is anonymous—continues:
2.
O nefas! O crimen!
Mors transit limen!
O Parvule delicate!
Patriam defende!
Jam victima sumus,
Et pulvis et fumus.
Patriam!
Patriam!
Patriam defende!
O injustice! O crime! Death advances! O tender Infant! defend our country. Already are we victims, naught but smoke and dust. Our country, etc., etc.
3.
Tu nudus hic jaces
Et friges et taces!
O Parvule delicate!
Patriam defende!
Minusculum pectus,
Duriusculus lectus!
Nihilominus telo
Pugnabis e cœlo!
Patriam!
Patriam!
Patriam defende!
All naked as we see thee, and cold and silent! O tender Infant! defend our country. Delicate is thy breast. Hard is thy couch! And yet, from heaven on high, wilt thou combat for us! Our country, etc., etc.
This people's poet and clever Latinist is liberal of his diminutives, minusculum, duriusculus, and displays, withal, a curious affectation of rhyming richness, Turcam, furcam; lectus, pectus; laudi, audi; magnus, agnus. And yet there is deep emotion and profound lyric agitation compressed into the shortest possible strophes, all vigorously concise and eloquently expressive. We omit several beautiful verses:
4.
Grassantur,
Furantur,
Prædantur,
Bacchantur!
O Parvule delicate!
Patriam defende!
Nil tutum
Nil ausum,
Nil satis est clausum!
Nil fœdera valent.
Cum hæreses calent.
Patriam!
Patriam!
Patriam defende!
Devastating, raging, slaying, in orgies they ruin. O tender Infant! defend our country. Naught is safe with us, naught withholds them. Heresy triumphs! Treaties are trampled upon! Our country, etc., etc.
5.
Polonia perit
Et spolium erit.
O Parvule delicate!
Patriam defende!
Tu fregeris nisi
Vim hostis invisi,
Oppresseris facem
Et dederis pacem!
Patriam!
Patriam!
Patriam defende!
Poland perishes. A prey she becomes. O tender Infant! defend our country. Sealed is her fate, unless thou breakest the force of the enemy that crushes her; unless thou givest peace. Our country, etc., etc.
6.
Est tempus, est hora
Ne, quæso, sit mora!
Parvule delicate!
Patriam defende!
Vicini laborant,
Et aliud orant!
Quod perfidus hostis
Nos, superi, nostis!
Patriam!
Patriam!
Patriam defende!
The time and the hour have come. Oh! delay not, I implore. O tender Infant! save our country. With other things our neighbors are occupied. Thou, O God supreme! knowest the designs of the enemy. Defend, defend our country!
How admirable the popular simplicity preserved here—an infantine tenderness, a Slavonian murmur, a solemn melody resembling the moaning sigh of weeping willows, an echo of those charming Lithuanian ballads finding voice in the grand old ecclesiastical Roman idiom.