An awful width! Norwegian woods shall build His fleets; the Swede his vassal, and the Dane: The glebe of fifty kingdoms shall be tilled To feed his dazzling, desolating train, Camped sumless, ’twixt the Black and Baltic main: Brute hosts, I own; but Sparta could not write, And Rome, half-barbarous, bound Achaia’s chain: So Russia’s spirit, midst Sclavonic night, Burns with a fire more dread than all your polished light. But Russia’s limbs (so blinded statesmen say) Are crude, and too colossal to cohere. O, lamentable weakness! reckoning weak The stripling Titan, strengthening year by year. What implement lacks he for war’s career, That grows on earth, or in its floods and mines, (Eighth sharer of the inhabitable sphere) Whom Persia bows to, China ill confines, And India’s homage waits, when Albion’s star declines? But time will teach the Russ, e’en conquering Has handmaid arts: ay, ay, the Russ will woo All sciences that speed Bellona’s car, All murder’s tactic arts, and win them too; But never holier Muses shall imbue His breast, that’s made of nature’s basest clay: The sabre, knout, and dungeon’s vapour blue His laws and ethics: far from him away Are all the lovely nine that breath but freedom’s day. Say, e’en his serfs, half humanised, should learn Their human rights,—will Mars put out his flame In Russian bosoms? no, he’ll bid them burn A thousand years for nought but martial fame, Like Romans:—yet forgive me, Roman name! Rome could impart what Russia never can; Proud civic rights to salve submission’s shame. Our strife is coming; but in freedom’s van The Polish Eagle’s fall is big with fate to man. Proud bird of old! Mohammed’s moon recoiled Before thy swoop: had we been timely bold, That swoop, still free, had stunned the Russ, and foiled Earth’s new oppressors, as it foiled her old. Now thy majestic eyes are shut and cold: And colder still Polonia’s children find The sympathetic hands, that we outhold. But, Poles, when we are gone, the world will mind, Ye bore the brunt of fate, and bled for humankind. So hallowedly have ye fulfilled your part, My pride repudiates e’en the sigh that blends With Poland’s name—name written on my heart. My heroes, my grief-consecrated friends! Your sorrow, in nobility, transcends Your conqueror’s joy: his cheek may blush; but shame Can tinge not yours, though exile’s tear descends; Nor would ye change your conscience, cause and name, For his, with all his wealth, and all his felon fame.