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,