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230 ["Readers who have already observed into what close

connection Mickiewicz loves to bring the phenomena of nature and

the affairs of men, will not find it difficult, nor will they

regard it as a forced interpretation, to understand the clouds,

which at the close of the poem... he paints with such

disproportionate breadth and with such apparent minuteness, as

something quite different from mere external reality. They will

have no difficulty in seeing in that western cloud, which was

adorned with gold and pearl, but in the centre was blood-red,

Napoleon, the great warrior of the west; or, if they prefer, the

hopes of Poland that were linked to him. We are in the year 1812:

both the aureole of that name, and the hopes and rejoicing that

it aroused, we may recognise in the gleaming, but fleeting

picture, which 'slowly turned yellow, then pale and grey,' and

behind which the sun fell asleep with a sigh.