Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/43

 Rh supports and unites the infinite threads of Creation:—threads which all move under its direction, and weft, to which every human effort must be attached, if fertile or imperishable results are to be evolved. Whosoever works otherwise, builds upon the sands; striving to annul the labors of the centuries, he can found nothing true, real, or absolute; the lightest wind will sweep away the building reared by his ignorance and presumption.

All the generous ardor with which such convictions inspired our Poet, he wrought into the service of his cause in "The Psalms of the Future." Sublime Pleader! His nation in its agony was then ready to rush into measures of extremity, but, braving unpopularity, he started up at once to the defense of practical good sense and chivalric honor, against the madness of despair.

In 1846, Galicia was mined with conspiracies, all of which had adopted the national flag as their symbol of order and rallying sign. Nevertheless, for some of the affiliated, this flag was to bear in its folds, not only the independence of their country, but also a violent and radical transformation of society. These radicals, while holding up the foreign usurpers to the indignation of the people, also doomed the higher classes of the Polish nation as accomplices in an oppression from which they, however, had been the first to suffer. The Government of M. de Metternich, though fully informed with regard to the insurrection, left free course to the democratic and socialistic propaganda, certain in advance that when the revolution did break out, it would fall exhausted by mutual destruction before reaching the Government, and that in a soil so torn and uprooted by internal convulsions, it would be easy to build a firmer foundation for Austrian power.

The Anonymous Poet understood the danger, and divined the calculation of the Austrian Government; he endeavored to avoid the peril, and disappoint Austria; and to effect this, he used the arms which his own genius placed in his hands,—that mastery of poetic form which stamped his words with so much authority! He wrote the Psalms of Faith, of Hope, and of Love, and in them he made eloquent appeals to the heart, as well as to the political acumen of his fellow-citizens. He demonstrated