He stood before the court; with one arm laid
Upon his sabre, and the other leaning
Upon the table, having summoned both
The parties, “Silence in the Court!” he cries.
Dreaming and finishing his evening prayers,
Thus Litva’s latest Wozny sank to sleep.
Such were the sports and contests in those years
In a quiet Litvin village, while the rest
Of all the world was drowned in tears and blood;
While he, that Man, the god of war, with cloud
Of regiments circled, armed with thousand guns,
The silver eagles harnessed with the golden
Unto his chariot, flew from Libya’s wastes
To the Alps, sky-touching, thunder after thunder
Still hurling, at the Pyramids, at Tabor,
Marengo, Ulm and Austerlitz. Before him
Ran Victory and Conquest, and behind
The fame of such great deeds, in heroes’ names
Fruitful, that from the Nile with clamour went
Towards the North, and ev’n on Niemen’s shores
Resounded, as from rocks, from Moskpa’s ranks,
That guarded Litva, as with iron walls,
From news, to Russia dreadful as the plague.
Yet news not seldom, like a stone from heaven,
Fell into Litva. Sometimes an old man
Came begging bread, of arm or leg bereft;
Who having charity received, stood still
And heedfully did cast his eyes around.
And when he saw no Russian soldiers there,
Nor a jarmulka,55 nor a collar red,
He then told who he was; a legionist
His old bones bringing to that Fatherland,
That he no longer could defend. How then
The noble family around him pressed,
And all the household choking with their tears!
He sat at table and told histories
More wonderful than fable. He would tell
How General Dombrowski strives to march
To Poland from Italian land;56 how he
Gathers his countrymen on Lombard plain.
How Kniaziewicz commands from Capitol,
And victor, threw before the Frenchmen’s eyes
A hundred bloody standards,57 wrest away
From children of the Caesars. And likewise
How Jablonowski passed where pepper grows,
Where sugar melted is, and where the woods
Sweet-smelling flourish in eternal spring;
Our general with the Danube’s legions there
The Negroes threatens,58 for his country sighs.
The old man’s words in secret went around
The village; and some boy, who them had heard,
Was sudden lost from home; in woods and swamps
He lurked in secret; by the Muscovites
Pursued, he sprang to hide him in the Niemen.
And diving under, swam to Warsaw’s Duchy,
Where unto him a friendly voice did cry:
“Welcome unto us, comrade!” But ere parting
He mounted on a stony hill, and said
Across the river to the Muscovites:
“Until we meet again!” Thus stole away
Gorecki, Pac, Obuchowicz, Piotrowski,
And Obolewski, Rozycki, Janowicz,
And Mierzejewski, and Brochocki, and
Bernatowicze, Kupsc, and Gedymin,
With others whom I reckon not; they left
Their parents and their land beloved; and goods
Confiscate to the treasury of the Czar.
Betimes a wandering friar to Litva came
From a strange convent, and when he beheld
And knew the mansion of the village lords,
He showed them the gazette, which he unripped
From out his scapulary; therein stood
The number of the soldiers, and the name
Of every legion’s general, of each man,
News of his victory, or of his death.
Thus after many years a family
Received their first news of a son, his life,
Glory, or death; they put on mourning, yet
They dared not say for whom they mourning wore.
The neighbourhood could only guess, and so
The silent sorrow of their lords, or joy
Did form the sole gazette the peasants knew.
And such a secret emissary friar
No doubt was Robak, for he often held
A conversation with the Judge alone;
And after such discourse was always spread
Some news abroad, throughout the neighbourhood.
The Bernardine did by his action show
He had not always worn the cowl, nor in
The convent walls grown old; he bore a scar
Above the right ear, somewhat o’er the brow,
And on his cheek a trace of lance or ball,
Not recent; sure he never got such wounds
While reading missals. But not only dreadful
Was he by looks and scars, for in his mien
And voice was something soldierlike. At mass,
When from the altar with uplifted hands
He turned towards the people, while he said,
“The Lord be with you!”—even there at times
He turned round nimbly with a single action,
As wheeling round at his commander’s call.
He spoke the words of mass in such a tone
As officers before their squadrons use.
The boys who served him at the mass knew this.
In politics was Robak better versed
Than in the lives of saints; upon his rounds
Going, he tarried in the district town
Full of affairs; he letters oft received
Which never before strangers opened he.
He sent off messengers, but where and why
He said not; often did he creep by night
To lordly mansions, and unceasingly
He whispered with the nobles, and he passed
O’er all the neighbouring hamlets there around,
Discoursing with the peasants not a little,
But always of those things which passed abroad.
And now he comes to wake the Judge, who for
The last hour was asleep; he has surely news.
Book II
The Castle
A hunt with greyhounds of a singled-out hare—The guest in the castle—The last of the courtiers relates the history of the last of the Horeszkos—A glance into the orchard—The maiden among the cucumbers—Breakfast—Madam Telimena’s Petersburg anecdote—Fresh outbreak of the Kusy and Sokol disputes—Robak’s intervention—The Wojski’s speech—Pledges—After mushrooms.
Which of us does not recollect those years
When, as a lad, with rifle on his shoulder,
He went forth, whistling loudly, to the plain;
Where neither mound nor hedge a hindrance made
Unto his footstep; where, o’erstepping ridges,
Thou seest not that they mark a stranger’s land?
Because in Litva, like a ship at sea,
The hunter by whatever path he will,
Expatiates freely o’er the ample space,
Or like a prophet gazes on the sky,
Where in the clouds are many signs, beheld
By hunter’s eye; or like a wizard he
Converses with the earth, which, dumb to cits,
With multitude of voices whispers him.
There screeched the landrail from the mead; but vain
It were to seek him, for he glides away
In grass, as in the Niemen does the pike.
There overhead the springtide’s morning bell
Rang out—the lark in heaven as deeply hid.
The eagle, with broad
