God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 2. 1795 to the Present

THE AUSTRIAN PARTITION 119

Yet a knight in paper armour sounds the alarm,

As he rolls the stone from the door of the tomb:

'Arise, O Nation, gird your strong right arm;

At the third stroke, it's the crack of doom.'

Boy-Zeleriski's impish doggerel was scandalous enough, even in Cracow, espe-
cially when he attacked more risque subjects such as the clergy or the conven-
tional sexual mores of the day. In political affairs, he remained,a convinced
sceptic, gently deriding the notion that national independence would somehow
cure all the people's ills. His satirical temper, and his sceptical politics, were
highly reminiscent of the Stanczyks, and represented the older Galician fashions
which even then were giving way to the new, nationalist trends. It may have
been inevitable that Austria—Hungary passed away. But everything that fol-
lowed was not necessarily an improvement.