dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Book of the Sonnet  »  Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

I. The Polish Insurrection

Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)

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 Zamoyski smote the Tartar Khan;

Than, earlier, when on the Baltic shore

Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.