Sonnet—“Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar...”
Written, on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection.
Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar
The hosts to battle: be not bought and sold.
Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold;
Break through your iron shackles—fling them far.
O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar
Grew to this strength among his deserts cold;
When even to Moscow’s cupolas were rolled
The growing murmurs of the Polish war!
Now must your noble anger blaze out more
Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan,
The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before—
Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan,
Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore
Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.
Poland
Reprinted without alteration in 1872, except the removal of italics in “now” among the Early Sonnets.
How long, O God, shall men be ridden down,
And trampled under by the last and least
Of men? The heart of Poland hath not ceased
To quiver, tho’ her sacred blood doth drown
The fields; and out of every smouldering town
Cries to Thee, lest brute Power be increased,
Till that o’ergrown Barbarian in the East
Transgress his ample bound to some new crown:—
Cries to thee, “Lord, how long shall these things be?
How long this icyhearted Muscovite
Oppress the region?” Us, O Just and Good,
Forgive, who smiled when she was torn in three;
Us, who stand now, when we should aid the right—
A matter to be wept with tears of blood!
To—— (“As when, with downcast eyes...”)
Reprinted without alteration as first of the Early Sonnets in 1872; subsequently in the twelfth line “That tho’” was substituted for “Altho’,” and the last line was altered to—
“And either lived in either’s heart and speech,”
and “hath” was not italicised.