Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/56

 44 ballads, to the story of the exiled warrior, who wanders through woods and many a time is ready to perish in agony and starvation, until at last he sinks down at the feet of his faithful little horse, which digs his grave with its hoof. Closely gathered about the master, the soldiers listen to the well-known melody and recall the better days when they sang this ballad at the grave of their fatherland.

"They raised their heads, for how entirely different, how much lighter it sounded now—louder, in another time, carrying another message. And again the master let his glance glide over the strings, folding his hands together, and struck a blow with both staves, so fully, so powerfully, that the strings resounded like a brazen trumpet, and this renowned melody born of the holiest hope, this triumphal march flew towards heaven: 'It is not yet all over with Poland! not so long as we live! Up, Dombrowski! To Poland!' and all clapped their hands, and 'Up, Dombrowski!' pealed through the hall. And as if he himself were startled at the effect, the master trembled. . . ."

And covering his face, while a torrent of tears burst out through his fingers, he says to Dombrowski: "Yes, General, thou art he, whom the singer's mouth has heralded," and the poet adds: "Thus he spoke, the brave Jew, he loved his native country as a Pole."

Yet though there is now no religious division in Russian Poland, of late years a party division of another kind has arisen—namely, that between the youth with positive tendencies, who are disposed to make the liberation of the intellect the highest aim, and the Catholic patriots, or those working with them.

The Catholic religion has long seemed to be indissolubly bound up in the national cause. Without the influence of the Catholic clergy it would have been impossible to keep the larger part of the population, which is excluded from the higher culture, firmly united as a nationality. Now this difficulty has arisen, that those possessing the highest culture no longer believe in the Catholic faith, and that the leaders of youth believe the only possibility for intellectual advance to lie in opposing modern views of life to the tradition of