POLISH PATRIOT'S APPEAL.
(For the Mirror.)
Rise fellow men! our country yet remains
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high,
And swear with her to live—for her to die.
CAMPBELL.
Have we not proved our country's worth—the country of the free?
Have we not raised the tyrant's foot—and struck for liberty—
The giant foot that on us fell, in war's tremendous fall—
The mighty weight that bore us down and held our arms in thrall?
Have we not risked our homes, our all, at Freedom's glorious shrine,
And dared the vengeance of the Russ, whose sway is yclept divine?
And have we not appealed to arms—our last and dearest right!
And is not ours a sacred cause, a just and holy fight?
Yes, on Sarmatia's bleeding form Oppression's fetters rang,
And Liberty's last dying dirge the Northern trumpet sang:
Our hopes were buried in the grave where Kosciusko lies;
There came not friendship then from earth—nor mercy from the skies!
But Heaven has roused the Polish slave and bid him rend his chains,
And now we rank among the free—"Our country yet remains:"
Again we seek our native rights by God and Nature given—
A people's right unto their soil from us unjustly riven.
We call upon the honoured brave—the free of every land—
For succour from the powerful—for aid from every strand:
We ask for every good man's prayer—we call for help on high;
Ye shades of Poland's slaughtered sons, look on propitiously.
We fight the fight of nations—bear witness field and storm
To our desert hereafter? Now we are but braggarts warm—
But by our honest cause, we swear, ere they our land retake,
Each town shall he a charnel tomb—each field a gory lake!