This essay explores the improvisational music of Adam Mickiewicz in Dzaidy, or “Forefather’s Eve”, comparing such unrehearsed songs of exile with Byron’s treatment of poet laureates in Don Juan ( Bob Southey and “The Isles of Greece”). Where (in which nation?) was spontaneous song possible in the early 19th century, and how did Mickiewicz, Pushkin, and Byron respond to the censorship of their publishers (John Murray, for example) and Czar Nicholas (to take another), who viewed them as Satanic poets or “Satan singing” (as Mickiewicz puts it in Dzaidy). Archibald Macleish recognized the greatness of Adam Mickiewicz on the occasion marking the centennial of his death, lamenting the lack of respect for poetry in the United States, where it was too often met with indifference, and for freedom under the McCarthy era. How did Byron and Mickiewicz respond to censorship and what do such responses tell us about Mickiewicz’s reception as a Polish poet by Pushkin and others, before, during and after the Cold War?