TO KOSCIUSZKO, John Keats

Picture 1. Mount Kosciusko, (Australia) by Eugen Von Guerard

Australia & Poland & Chicago share high places honouring General Tadeusz Kościuszko, the great Polish warrior and deliverer of Poland. The poet is English.

Sonnet XVI. TO Kosciusko

- by John Keats

Good Kosciusko, thy great name alone
Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;
It comes upon us like the glorious pealing
Of the wide spheres -- an everlasting tone.

And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,
The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing,
And changed to harmonies, for ever stealing
Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne.

It tells me too, that on a happy day,
When some good spirit walks upon the earth,
Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore
Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth

To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away
To where the great God lives for evermore.

-
John Keats (1795-1821) English Romantic poet

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Note: Mt Kosciusko is the highest mountain in Australia. I have spent decent hours atop our highest peaks, and know that it is as if Keats knew and honours Polish-Australian explorer Count Strezlecki's naming, for he catches the heightened atmosphere of the mountaintop in evocations such as these "high feeling... glorious pealing of the wide spheres - in worlds unknown.... burst from clouds concealing ...for ever stealing through cloudless blue, where some good spirit walks upon the earth..." That is yet what it is like to be atop Australia's humble Alpine height.

Picture 2. General Tadeusz Kościuszko monument in Chicago, USA