Jan Kochanowski (1530-84) was the greatest poet of Poland during its
existence as an independent kingdom. His _Laments_ are his masterpiece,
the choicest work of Polish lyric poetry before the time of Mickiewicz.
Kochanowski was a learned poet of the Renaissance, drawing his
inspiration from the literatures of Greece and Rome. He was also a man
of sincere piety, famous for his translation of the Psalms into his
native language. In his _Laments_, written in memory of his little
daughter Ursula, who died in 1579 at the age of thirty months, he
expresses the deepest personal emotion through the medium of a literary
style that had been developed by long years of study. The _Laments_, to
be sure, are not based on any classic model and they contain few direct
imitations of the classical poets, though it may be noted that the
concluding couplet of _Lament XV_ is translated from the _Greek
Anthology_. On the other hand they are interspersed with continual
references to classic story; and, more important, are filled with the
atmosphere of the Stoic philosophy, derived from Cicero and Seneca. And
along with this austere teaching there runs through them a warmer tone
of Christian hope and trust; _Lament XVIII_ is in spirit a psalm. To us
of today, however, these poems appeal less by their formal perfection,
by their learning, or by their religious tone, than by their exquisite
humanity. Kochanowski's sincerity of grief, his fatherly love for his
baby girl, after more than three centuries have not lost their power to
touch our hearts. In the _Laments_ Kochanowski embodied a wholesome
ideal of life such as animated the finest spirits of Poland in the years
of its greatest glory, a spirit both humanistic and universally human.