Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/34

 28 raising his own sorrow-crowned head above the miseries of Time, gazed with the holy trust of the martyr far into the heavens, and "there saw God," divining with sacred pride and joy that Future which the Polish people see clearly revealed to them through their present agonies, and which their poets, in spite of chains, prisons, torture, and exile, never cease to sing to them. In the vast world of thought and the wide regions of poetry there were no limits for Krasinski, and he reveled in that mystic freedom of art which was alike denied to himself and country in the sphere of politics. But no impurity ever sullies his noble pages, and what he wrote on political regeneration is already graven on the heart of the world.

And yet he never once stooped to win popular applause. Compared with the contemporary writers of Poland, he is especially distinguished by a nature not objectively, but essentially and spiritually poetic, which is stamped deeply upon all his writings. But his peculiar traits are not to be found in the rich gifts of an excitable fancy, wealth of imagery, charms of vivid description, or luxury of ever-varying combinations. They are to be looked for in a higher region,—in a love for justice, and a clear and far-reaching insight into truth, into its development in things yet to be, a power of so distinctly portraying the future that one is strongly disposed to characterize his works as "Apocalyptic."

Known until now only as the "Anonymous Poet," he never sought literary fame, but concealed the good he was effecting as sedulously as others conceal shame. Enjoying the love and esteem of his countrymen, blessed with a wife as high-souled as beautiful, and lovely children, surrounded by many and true friends, and in the possession of large property, he might have been regarded as one highly favored by destiny. But health, that most inestimable of blessings, was denied him from youth until his last sigh; and his heart was wrung by never-uttered sorrows. He was thus no friend to idle and useless amusements, and was seldom seen in the saloons of the gay world; but he loved social intercourse with the friends whom he trusted, and it always