, how great losses should
be mourned? We once heard it remarked by a native of his own country:
"these pages could only have been written by a Pole." All that the
funeral train of an entire nation weeping its own ruin and death can
be imagined to feel of desolating woe, of majestic sorrow, wails in
the musical ringing of this passing bell, mourns in the tolling of this
solemn knell, as it accompanies the mighty escort on its way to the
still city of the Dead. The intensity of mystic hope; the devout appeal
to superhuman pity, to infinite mercy, to a dread justice, which numbers
every cradle and watches every tomb; the exalted resignation which has
wreathed so much grief with halos so luminous; the noble endurance of so
many disasters with the inspired heroism of Christian martyrs who
know not to despair;--resound in this melancholy chant, whose voice of
supplication breaks the heart. All of most pure, of most holy, of
most believing, of most hopeful in the hearts of children, women,
and priests, resounds, quivers and trembles there with irresistible
vibrations. We feel it is not the death of a single warrior we mourn,
while other heroes live to avenge him, but that a whole generation of
warriors has forever fallen, leaving the death song to be chanted but by
wailing women, weeping children and helpless priests. Yet this
Melopee so funereal, so full of desolating woe, is of such penetrating
sweetness, that we can scarcely deem it of this earth. These sounds,
in which the wild passion of human anguish seems chilled by awe and
softened by distance, impose a profound meditation, as if, chanted
by angels, they floated already in the heavens: the cry of a nation's
anguish mounting to the very throne of God! The appeal of human grief
from the lyre of seraphs! Neither cries, nor hoarse groans, nor impious
blasphemies, nor furious imprecations, trouble for a moment the sublime
sorrow of the plaint: it breathes upon the ear like the rhythmed sighs
of angels. The antique face of grief is entirely excluded. Nothing
recalls the fury of Cassandra, the prostration of Priam, the frenzy of
Hecuba, the despair of the Trojan captives. A sublime faith destroying
in the survivors of this Christian Ilion the bitterness of anguish and
the cowardice of despair, their sorrow is no longer marked by earthly
weakness. Raising itself from the soil wet with blood and tears, it
springs forward to implore God; and, having nothing more to hope from
eart