Sonnet — “Blow Ye the Trumpet, Gather From Afar...”
Written, on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection.
Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar
The hosts to battle: be not bought and sold.
Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold;
Break through your iron shackles—fling them far.
O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar
Grew to this strength among his deserts cold;
When even to Moscow’s cupolas were rolled
The growing murmurs of the Polish war!
Now must your noble anger blaze out more
Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan,
The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before—
Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan,
Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore
Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.