Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/516

Learn to bear pain and bitterest agony;
Be thy whole Nation living in thy breast!
Be thou the miracle joins Heaven to earth!
The holy Labarum in slavery!

Haste not toward death, till, like the buried seed,
Thy thought be sown and germing in the hearts
Of thy compatriots; till martyrdom
Shall be the pledge of certain victory!
The crown of false vainglory leave to fools!
The loftiest souls heed not the siren voice.
 
But when the tocsin of events shall ring
The signal for thy final holocaust
With sad, wild peal,—and from thy native land, —
Kneel down upon the threshold of Eternity!
When deep within thy soul, contrite and humble
Thou hear'st the voice that only comes from God,—
Rise like a strong athlete who wins the goal!
Shake off thy feet the clinging dust of earth!
With infinite love, stretch forth thine arms to Heaven!
Without complaint, wail, inward bitterness,
March forth to meet thine executioners,
Saluting them with inmost, pitying glance
Of immortality!
Thus for the future shall thy sacrifice
A fruitful witness be, and from thy death
Will spring the germ of life for other men!

Those hopes the world deems folly, idle dreams,
Incorporate in actuality,
In faith, in justice, something palpable.
Which, like a probe, shall sink in all men's hearts,
And dwell forever there, although it touch
Them lightly in a breath, a quivering sigh! . . .
And then the world, thy murderer, will kneel
Before thee, and confess that brutal force
Is impotent to strike Country, or God,
From the conscience of the nations!

Behold! the blood that floweth from thy wounds
Hath sanctified thy Thought: that Thought will draw