Poland Is Not Yet Lost - Lyrics

Lyrics

The original lyrics authored by Wybicki were a poem consisting of six stanzas and a chorus repeated after all but last stanzas, all following an ABAB rhyme scheme. The official lyrics, based on a variant from 1806, show a certain departure from the original text. It misses two of the original stanzas and reverses the order of other two. Notably, the initial verse, "Poland has not yet died" was replaced with "Poland has not yet perished", suggesting a more violent cause of the nation's possible death. Wybicki's original manuscript was in the hands of his descendants until February 1944, when it was lost in Wybicki's great-great-grandson, Johann von Roznowski's home in Charlottenburg during the Allied bombing of Berlin. The manuscript is known today only from facsimile copies, twenty four of which were made in 1886 by Edward Rożnowski, Wybicki's grandson, who donated them to Polish libraries.

The main theme of the poem is the idea that was novel in the times of early nationalisms based on centralized nation-states – that the lack of political sovereignty does not preclude the existence of a nation. As Adam Mickiewicz explained in 1842 to students of Slavic Literature in Paris, the song "begins with verses which are the emblem of recent history: 'Poland has not yet perished, so long as we still live'. These words mean that people who have in them what indeed constitutes nationality are able to extend the existence of their nation regardless of the political circumstances of that existence, and may even pursue its re-creation." The song also includes a call to arms and expresses the hope that, under General Dąbrowski's command, the legionaries would rejoin their nation and retrieve "what the alien force has seized" through armed struggle.

The chorus and subsequent stanzas include heart-lifting examples of military heroes, set as role models for Polish soldiers: Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, Napoléon Bonaparte, Stefan Czarniecki and Tadeusz Kościuszko. Dąbrowski, for whom the anthem is named, was a commander in the failed 1794 Kościuszko Uprising against Russia. After the Third Partition in 1795, he came to Paris to seek French aid in re-establishing Polish independence and, in 1796, he started the formation of the Polish Legions, a Polish unit of the French Revolutionary Army. Bonaparte was, at the time when the song was written, a commander of the Italian campaign of French Revolutionary Wars and Dąbrowski's superior. Having already proven his skills as a military leader, he is described in the lyrics as the one "who has shown us ways to victory." Bonaparte is the only non-Polish person mentioned by name in the Polish anthem.

Stefan Czarniecki was a 17th-century hetman (military commander), famous for his role in driving the Swedish army out of Poland after an occupation that had left the country in ruins and is remembered by Poles as the Deluge. With the outbreak of a Dano-Swedish war, he continued his fight against Sweden in Denmark, from where he "returned across the sea" to fight the invaders alongside the king who was then at the Royal Castle in Poznań. In the same castle, Józef Wybicki, started his career as a lawyer (in 1765). Kościuszko, mentioned in a stanza now missing from the anthem, became a hero of the American Revolutionary War before coming back to Poland to defend his native country from Russia in the war of 1792 and a national uprising he led in 1794. One of his major victories during the uprising was the Battle of Racławice where the result was partly due to Polish peasants armed with scythes. Alongside the scythes, the song mentioned other types of weapon, traditionally used by the Polish szlachta, or nobility: the sabre, known in Polish as szabla, and the backsword.

Basia (a female name, diminutive of Barbara) and her father are fictional characters supposed to evoke a sentimental image of women and elderly men waiting for Polish soldiers to return home and liberate their fatherland. The route that Dąbrowski and his legions hoped to follow upon leaving Italy is hinted at by the words "we'll cross the Vistula, we'll cross the Warta", two major rivers flowing through the parts of Poland that were in Austrian and Prussian hands at the time.