Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/33

 Rh After a judicious analysis of the works of Krasinski, which we omit because the subject is more widely treated by the older and younger Mickiewicz, as well as by Julian Klaczko, our biographer continues:

A fragment only has as yet appeared of an apparently large work, entitled "Cracow in 1858," which seems to be written in the style peculiar to this poet. A volume of extracts from his letters has also been published in Paris, under the supervision of one of his dearest friends, Constantine Gaszynski, under whose name Krasinski published "The Dawn."

Poland venerates in him the distinguished author, the inspired poet, the sublime spirit, the brave man who knew how to sustain hope in adversity, and to quicken with new powers the sinking soul. The effort of his life was to attain moral perfection in his own being. But he rested not in this alone; he strove, even through his own constant sickness and sorrow, to call it forth not only in individuals, but to make it the life-pulse of his entire nation! The character of his works, and their marvelous influence upon his countrymen, have justly entitled him to the rank of a truly National Poet. Every chord which as an individual he struck upon his lyre rang in harmony with the desires, feelings, thoughts, and hopes of the Polish People. There certainly have been men on earth who could absorb into their own wider and deeper being all the thoughts, feelings, and hopes of their country; who were capable of fusing them in the glow of their own genius, and of bringing them forth in the clear light and close unity of art. Undoubtedly Krasinski takes a high, if not indeed the very highest, place among such rare national creators. Continually crushed under the weight of severe bodily afflictions, deeply wounded in heart, he took into his inmost soul the sad history of his People; he felt it as his own anguish, and placed it as his peculiar seal upon everything he has written. Sincerity, truth, glow of sympathy, knowledge, nay, clear prophetic insight, were the strong rounds of the ladder by which he ascended to such glittering heights. Wherever his people still breathed, not yet crushed to dust under the merciless foot of the spoiler, there the Poet,