Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/126

102 heart clutches a misgiving that all this is a dream within a dream, all long since forgotten splendour—but only now and then, for above everything that omnipotent vision still prevails: that solemn, majestic, triumphal march of such lordly greatness and proud gravity, of such sublimity, that there is nothing with which it can be compared.

The polonaise in A flat major is an overwhelming and truly exalted "Danse macabre" of that nation which, ever afresh, was condemned to death, and ever afresh broke the coffin-lid—and this, its magnificent clinging to life, its uniquely stubborn affirmation of life, has nowhere been revealed in Polish art so potently, so grimly, and so majestically as in this heroic dance.

Schumann wrote of Chopin's mazureks, that if the ruler of the north knew what foes he had in these modest melodies, he would infallibly forbid this music;—what, then, shall be said of this polonaise in A flat major, which signifies a thunderous, stubborn, unyielding manifesto of those who will not allow themselves to be buried alive?

And there came that time when the soul of the mighty seer surged up amid the martyrdom of his nation to the power of one who could compare himself with God and with frenzied hands beats upon the portals of destiny with the despairing