Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/114

90 quality of his eye, which is focussed for the distant sky-line of broad, lonely plains, it is the organic peculiarity of his larynx which fashioned for itself sounds unknown to the languages of other nations, it is the sighing and moaning of his earth and the music made by the courses of his streams and the rhythm to which the waves upon his lakes are stirred, and the monotone psalmody of autumn rain when with dismal insistence it beats against oozing windows.

And this fundamental tone of the Polish soul, such as is revealed at its purest in Polish folk-music, but which has at its disposal only a scanty gamut of a few notes, throve in Chopin's soul to a gigantic blossom of unspeakable beauty and loftiest. majesty.

The foreign sound of his name appears to be only a matter of chance, an unpleasant misunderstanding, for it is precisely in Chopin that the Polish folk-spirit celebrates its holiest Ascension Day. Chopin's soul is inseparably united with the soul of the entire Polish race by a sacrament of indissoluble vows. With Mickiewicz he could declare as a seer that the soul of the entire race was embodied in his, that he and the race were an inseparable unity, and in sooth, Poland could not have found a sublimer bridegroom than Chopin.