The Baroque period in Poland was alive for more than two centuries, beginning at the very end of the sixteenth century and lasting until the middle of the eighteenth century. The Polish Baroque writing style focused on richness of the form and consisted of metaphors, paradox, and conceit. This era in Polish literature produced works that reflected upon worldly pleasures, time, love, war, and death. It was also not uncommon for historical references to appear in literary works during the seventeenth century. Wespazjan Kochowski, the poet responsible for the Polish Baroque-style poem, A Curse on the Sons, of the Crown: Who Disrupt the Diets, expresses the negativity of Sarmatism with the literary devices of symbolism, metaphor, metonymy, imagery, personification, allusion, and simile. .
As the Baroque period was coming to an end, Polish literature became a product of the Polish Commonwealth's declining history and politics. Wespazjan Kochowski wrote this poem with the intention of warning his readers about the gentry's abuse of power. Kochowski's poem represents Sarmatism. Sarmatia was a mythical country created by the Polish gentry, the part of society that would choose the king. They did this present themselves as entitled and more elaborate by claiming to have non-Slavic ancestry. Kochowski's poem is made up of six stanzas, with eight lines in each stanza. In the traditional Polish version of this poem, there is a rhyme scheme present with the pattern of a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c in each stanza. In the first stanza, Kochowski uses two symbols. The first can be found in Line 1, when he asks a rhetorical question to the, "unheeding sons". The unheeding sons are used as a symbol for the Polish government body at the time, as officials have a bad reputation for serving their personal interests rather than doing what is best for the nation state. The unheeding sons do not listen to the second symbol, presented as the, "Mother," which is used to refer to the country of Poland throughout the whole poem.
