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Poems and Essays

By the late William Caldwell Roscoe. (Edited with a Prefatory Memoir, by his Brother-in-law, Richard Holt Hutton)

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AFTER THE HUNGARIAN WAR.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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21

AFTER THE HUNGARIAN WAR.

“The shadows of our martyrs pass before my eyes.”

THE LIVING.

Sleep, dead Hungarians, sleep in peace!
Would we might sleep so! Your release,
By shameful halter or the sword,
Was soft compassion of the Lord.
You do not break your hearts, or shed
Bitter tears;
Your sons are not in exile led;
You eat no begged, no stranger bread:
Would we, too, pressed our biers!

THE DEAD.

Living Hungarians, watch and pray!
And wait the breaking of the day.
The Lord yet liveth. Baneful night
Lies thick on justice and on right;
But the day-spring, slow yet sure,
Lies behind.
Wait! In the Lord's appointed hour,
High o'er these shades his sun shall tower,
And strike the oppressor blind.

22

THE LIVING.

O dead! we hear your voice and wait:
The Lord yet liveth, and is great!
We will take patience in one hand,
And in the right a sword. O Land!
Ancestral, honourable, grave,
Abide the wrong!
Thy children, thrust from forth thy door,
Shall repossess the ancient floor.
How long, O Lord, how long?
1851.
 

Kossuth's speech at Birmingham in 1851.