Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/15

Rh be it said, that, strengthened by the divine lessons of her Poet, she has hitherto been strong enough to resist all the temptations to avenge herself held out to her by Russia in the fell scheme of Pansclavism; that, having shed her generous blood on almost every battle-field in Europe, and having been deserted and betrayed by those whom she so faithfully served, she still bares her own breast to the pitiless knife of the Czar, rather than aid him to whet it anew for the heart of the civilized world! She knows the fury of the Russian Bear too well to let slip a single link of the chain she still holds in her manacled and wounded hands. Let the Russianized pansclavists of Bohemia call her the “Judas of the Sclaves;” England continue to temporize until India is lost and her own doom is near; Greece change the indolent Turk for the Muscovite Czar; France, conquered of old under the Great Napoleon in Russia because of his treachery to the martyred nation, and fallen beneath the armed heel of the ruthless Teuton under Napoleon the Little, seek a new ally in Russia as she cries in her terror “à bas les Polonais;” Italy wrap herself in her old indifference with regard to the fate of all “Northern Barbarians;” Austria in her fright strive to conciliate Galicia while losing Bohemia; Prussia rejoice in irritating stolen Posen, and join the oppressor in his designs until, having found his way through Vienna to Constantinople, the prophecy of Frederick the Great is fulfilled: “When Russia possesses Constantinople, two years later she will be in Konigsberg; young America bend her spotless brow as the bandage is wound round her flashing eyes, that she may not see the pool of blood surrounding the Autocrat;—the Polish Eagle does not quail; finding no home on earth, she spreads her snowy wings, mounts into the sky of holy sacrifice, and hopes, ‘because she there sees God!’”

These works of Krasinski “introduce a new literature to the American public.” Translations from the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Arabic, Persian, Hindoostanee, etc., are placed before us, but, as if the Russian censor ruled our press, for us Niemciewicz, Mickiewicz, Chodzko, Vincent Pol, Slowacki, Lelewel, Duchinski, Trentowski, Ostrowski, etc., etc., have suffered, written, sung, reasoned, and prophesied in