HOW long shall injustice prevail?
How long shall the weak rue the strong?
The children of Poland bewail
The yoke of the Russian?—How long?
Lo! one generation goes by,
And another succeeds as of old,
Yet no liberation is nigh—
Yet theirs are afflictions untold.
The hero, whose lustre and worth,
Might add to his nation's renown,
Still seeks at a far foreign hearth,
The shelter denied at his own.
No star left her home to illume,
The mother heart-broken and lorn—
The mother looks round on her gloom,
And curses the hour she was born.
In sight of the husband, or sire,
The wife or the daughter's defiled;
And to quench a demoniac ire,
Both mercy and love are reviled.
The smoke of the blood of the wise,
The holy, heroic, and good
Ascends from the earth to the skies,
And still crave the blood-hounds for blood.
How long shall injustice prevail?
And insult, and murder, and wrong,
Cause high-hearted Poland to wail?
Thou God of the helpless! how long?

1866.