The Calm Of The Sea, Adam Bernard Mickiewicz was born in December 1798 into a family of minor Polish nobility known as the szlachta. Their status allowed them to bear the hereditary Poraj coat of arms. The family lived on a grand estate in Zaosie, near Navahrudak. This was within the Russian Empire on the outskirts of Lithuania. Its modern day location is Belarus. Just to illustrate the political instability of this area, it had previously been a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and then Belarus. Much of Mickiewicz’s writing had Belarusian and Lithuanian folklore influences.
He had a good education and studied at the Imperial University of Vilnius. It was here that his political activities began when he and a group of friends formed a secret society called the Philomaths. Their aims were clear and unequivocal – total independence from the Russian Empire. On graduation he became a teacher at a secondary school in Kaunas but he continued with his membership of the Philomaths and, in 1823, the authorities arrested him and he was banished to central Russia as a punishment.
The Calm Of The Sea by Adam Mickiewicz
The Calm Of The Sea
The flag on the pavilion barely stirs,
The water quivers gently in the sun
Like some young promised maiden dreaming on,
Half-waking, of the joy that shall be hers,
The sails upon the masts’ bare cylinders
Are furled like banners when the war is done;
The ship rocks, chained on waters halcyon,
With idle sailors, laughing passengers.
O sea, among thy happy creatures, deep
Below, a polyp slumbers through the storm,
Its long arms ever lifted, poised to dart.
O thought, the hydra, memory, asleep
Through evil days, in peace will lift its form
And plunge its talons in thy quiet heart.
