Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/65

Rh wholly moral resistance, the glory of a quiet martyrdom without combat: ideas not calculated to be agreeable to the masses, especially to a people warlike by instinct, and gifted by nature with a temperament of fire. He preached to the cruelly wronged, a theory of sublime mysticism filled with such divine forgiveness that it exposed itself to criticism and suspicion, as it seemed to border upon an enervating submission, and could easily be confounded with it. Indeed, a long time after the death of the poet, on the eve of the late events in Warsaw, a maddened democracy was not ashamed to rail at the "lyric cowardice of the great anonymous poet." He, however, was neither discouraged by raillery nor by bitter and cruel invective. His faith was deep in the truths he proclaimed, and for all further results he trusted to time, to justice, and—why should we not say it?—to his inspired words, of which he knew the irresistible power among his people.

It is, indeed, ah exceedingly difficult thing for any foreigner to estimate aright the immense and sovereign power which Poetry exercises upon that unfortunate nation. This arises from the fact that a very false and incomplete idea is generally held of the position of the country, and of the kind of foreign domination which has tortured it, especially in Russian Poland, and under the rule of Nicholas. We do not now speak of the scattered persecutions always arising upon the discovery of conspiracies as little dangerous as cruelly punished; we speak of the ordinary state of things, the every-day life in Poland. Religious faith constantly annoyed and suspected as a symptom of ill will toward the government; no universities nor institutions of science; all schools given entirely up to a foreign tongue, and regulated by officers or sub-officers from the heart of Russia; a censorship ignorant, susceptible, and timid sitting in judgment upon every thought and every word; the administration, government, and courts of justice directed by foreigners speaking a language rarely understood, and universally detested; the manners, customs, and habits of the country violently