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A POLISH INSURGENT.
1863.
What would you have? said I;[1]
'Tis so easy to go and die,
'Tis so hard to stay and live,
In this alien peace and this comfort callous,
Where only the murderers get the gallows,
Where the jails are for rogues who thieve.
'Tis so easy to go and die,
Where our Country, our Mother, the Martyr,
Moaning in bonds doth lie,
Bleeding with stabs in her breast,
Her throat with a foul clutch prest,
Under the thrice-accursed Tartar.
But Smith, your man of sense,
Ruddy, and broad, and round-like so!
Kindly—but dense, but dense,
Said to me: "Do not go:
- ↑ Some time after writing this I found that the great Balzac, in La Cousine Bette, dwells on this very phrase, "Que voulez-vous?" as characteristic of the gallant and reckless Poles.
