s: Or cleaving mists of Sorrow, left it starred


s: Above self-pity slain:  or it was Prayer


s: First taken for Life's cleanser; or the tongue


s: Spake for the world against this heart; or rings


s: Old laughter, from the founts of wisdom sprung;


s: Or clap of wing of joy, that was a throb


s: From breast of Earth, and did no creature rob:


s: These quickening live.  But deepest at her springs,


s: Most filial, is an eye to love her young.


s: Is our lost garden, flower, bird and hive.


s: Blood of her blood, aim of her aim, are then


s: The green-robed and grey-crested sons of men:


s: The living in the dead; she will inspire


s: Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores,


s: Propelled, the Bacchic of the spirit trusts:


s: A fervour drunk from mystic hierophants;


s: Led round fermenting eddies.  Faith she plants


s: Which rightly Youth has read, though blindly read;


s: Her essence reading in her toothsome goad;


s: Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants.


s: But love we well the young, her road midway


s: Despite our feeble hold on this green home,


s: And the vast outer strangeness void of dome,


s: Shall we be with them, of them, taught to feel,


s: Or shadow of a shade, or swing of tides;


s: As brooding upon age, when veins congeal,


s: Grey palsy nods to think.  With us for guides,


s: To views in Alpine thought are they helped on.


s: Good if so far we live in them when gone!


s: And there the arrowy eagle of the height


s: Becomes the little bird that hops to feed,


s: To make it wholesome blood and fruitful seed.


s: Perforce of soul discerned in mind, we hear


s: Earth with her Onward chime, with Winter Spring.


s: And ours the mellow note, while sharing joys


s: No more subjecting mortals who have learnt


s: The Pleasures read in sparks of substance burnt;


s: That rolls us to a mark may yet be willed.


s: Of all the world, we peck at and are filled.


s: The look of her heart slipped out and in.


s: His arm for her girdle at waist was thrown:


s: He clasped her, clasping a shape of stone;


s: Was fire on her eyes till they let him in.


s: Her breast to a God of the daybeams shone,


s: Tranced she stood, with a chattering chin;


s: Her shrunken form at his feet was thrown:


s: When it is no tyrant who leaves me lone!


s: The brown leaf cracked a scorching curl;


s: They laid the trance on breath and frame,


s: Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed;


s: Churned, gurgled, spouted, interflashed,


s: In us were they, that griefless plained,


s: That plaining soared; and through the heart


s: And hoar with crust the cowslip swelled.


s: Unseen of her attendant nymphs; none knew.


s: Forthwith the creature to his fellows drew,


s: And looking backward on the curtained path,


s: He strove to tell; he could but heave a breast


s: Too full, and point to mouth, with failing leers:


s: Vainly he danced for speech, he giggled tears,


s: Made as if torn in two, as if tight pressed,


s: As if cast prone; then fetching whimpered tunes


s: For words, flung heel and set his hairy flight


s: Through forest-hollows, over rocky height.


s: The green leaves buried him three rounds of moons.


s: Had hurried him outrunning reason's curb.


s: 'Tis told how when that hieaway unchecked


s: To dell returned, he seemed of tempered mood:


s: The torrent now a brook, the valley wrecked.


s: Goddess and Goatfoot hourly wrestled sore;


s: From thicket-sprays to where his full-blown dame,


s: In circle by the lusty friskers gripped,


s: Laughed the showered rose-leaves while her limbs were stripped.


s: Then twirled she mounds of ripeness, wreath of arms.


s: His hoof kicked up the clothing for such charms.


s: Is wreaked, she knows, yet smiles content


s: Save eyed and armed and skilled to cleave


s: Our farthest smiles, our next is friend.


s: That spins the lark for shine, for showers;


s: He drinks his hurried flight, and drops.


s: Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod.


s: Her shivering Spring feigned fast asleep,


s: For a Heracles in his fighting ire there is never the glory that


s: When ashen he lies and the poets arise to sing of the work he has


s: But to vision alive under shallows of sight, lo, the Labourer's


s: Can an enemy wither his cheer?  Not you, ye fair yellow-flowering


s: Who join with your lords to jar the chords of a bosom heroic, and


s: Apparition is then of a monster-task, in a policy carving new


s: That her sons over seas in a rally of praise may behold a thrice


s: Ashine with the light of the doing of right:  at the gates of the


s: Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain,


s: Are they who point our pathway and sustain.


s: They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.


s: When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.


s: To see Life's formless offspring and subdue


s: Desire of times unripe, we have these two,


s: Whose union is right reason:  join they hands,


s: The world shall know itself and where it stands;


s: What cowering angel and what upright beast


s: Make man, behold, nor count the low the least,


s: Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.


s: When these two meet, a point of time is ours.


s: Smooth for the leap on their great voice below,


s: Some eddies near the brink borne swift along


s: Will capture hearing with the liquid song,


s: So, while the headlong world's imperious force


s: Resounded under, heard I these discourse.


s: First words, where down my woodland walk she led,


s: To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:


s: - Your faith in me appals, to shake my own,


s: When still I find you in this mire alone.


s: By men had slain me but for those you trace.


s: Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!


s: - Needs must you drink of me while here you live,


s: Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems.


s: She hath the secret never fieriest reach


s: Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.


s: - Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough,


s: My semblance when I have you not as now.


s: Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap:


s: By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.


s: I listen at their breasts:  is there no jar


s: Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are,


s: Are my true pupils while the world is brute.


s: What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,


s: If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word,


s: Content, but how to savour hope deferred.


s: We come of earth, and rich of earth may be;


s: The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use


s: Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;


s: And pass despised; 'a-cold for lack of heat,'


s: Like other corpses, but without death's plea.


s: - My sister calls for battle; is it she?


s: - Rather a world of pressing men in arms,


s: Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms


s: With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!


s: No home is here for peace while evil breeds,


s: While error governs, none; and must the seeds


s: You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,


s: Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood


s: Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!


s: - My sober little maid, when we meet first,


s: Drugs cravings.  Here we see how men advance


s: A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred,


s: Like dead weeds on whipped waters.  Shout the word


s: Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march,


s: Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then


s: - Observe them, and down rearward for a term,


s: Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm.


s: Thence look this way, across the fields that show


s: Men's early form of speech for Yes and No.


s: My sister a bruised infant's utterance had;


s: And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad.


s: I knew my home where I had choice to feel


s: Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn.


s: Its learning is through Science to despair.


s: - Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not


s: The lower deeps.  It laughs at Happiness!


s: That know I, though the echoes of it wail,


s: For one step upward on the crags you scale.


s: Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,


s: Which means our soul asleep or body's lust,


s: Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat


s: - But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads


s: Are thrown by every novel light upraised.


s: The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazed


s: And trembling as its pregnant Aetna swells.


s: Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire


s: And leave the track of devils where men built.


s: Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guilt


s: Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud,


s: If drops the chillness of a passing cloud,


s: To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:


s: None save they but the souls which them contain.


s: Alone gives aid to city charged with sin.


s: A world that for the spur of fool and knave


s: Sweats in its laboratory what shall save?


s: But men who ply their wits in such a school


s: Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool.


s: To know her Wisdom's mother, and that we


s: May deem the harshness of her later cries


s: In labour a sure goad to prick the wise,


s: If men among the warnings which convulse


s: Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse.


s: Long ere the rising of this age of ours,


s: The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers.


s: Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,


s: Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill,


s: They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will.


s: Behold such army gathering; ours the spur,


s: A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach.


s: Hold subject lest the grand destruction come.


s: To overthrow, perchance uproot, the race.


s: Within, without, they are a field of tares:


s: Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares,


s: And wherefore warrior service they must yield,


s: That is my comfort, following shock on shock,


s: Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.


s: Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night,


s: Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight,


s: Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,


s: What forces on the earth and under roll,


s: Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand


s: Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land.


s: They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:


s: Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war.


s: - My sister, as I read them in my glass,


s: Their field of tares they take for pasture grass.


s: Save browsing--the concrete indifferent!


s: Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:


s: They fear not for the race when full the trough.


s: They have much fear of giving up the ghost;


s: And these are of mankind the unnumbered host.


s: - If I could see with you, and did not faint


s: In beating wing, the future I would paint.


s: Those massed indifferents will learn to quake:


s: Once denser than the grunters of the sty.


s: If I could see with you!  Could I but fly!


s: - The length of days that you with them have housed,


s: An outcast else, approves their cause espoused.


s: - O true, they have a cause, and woe for us,


s: While still they have a cause too piteous!


s: Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,


s: They walk no longer with a stumbler blind,


s: And quicken in the virtue of their cause,


s: The toilers with your 'troughsters' now engage;


s: Instructing them, through their acutest sense,


s: Already have my people shown their worth,


s: More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.


s: That love to love of labour leads:  thence love


s: Of humankind--earth's incense flung above.


s: - Admit some other features:  Faithless, mean;


s: Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene;


s: Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells


s: On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;


s: Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!


s: - Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil,


s: Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime.


s: Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry:


s: As little as Time's earliest knew the sky.


s: Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame


s: At intervals, in proof of whom they came.


s: To strengthen our foundations is the task


s: Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,


s: Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves


s: The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves.


s: My sister sees no round beyond her mood;


s: To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.


s: Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves,


s: It moves:  O much for me to say it moves!


s: About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,


s: Though not the stream of the paternal smile:


s: And where his tide of nourishment he drives,


s: He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,


s: The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills;


s: Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills.


s: To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,


s: His golden promise over leagues of seed,


s: Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.


s: The races which on barbarous force begin


s: And cancelled blessings will the current length


s: Reveal till they know need of shaping strength.


s: Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.


s: Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;


s: Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.


s: Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,


s: For tens up the safe mountains at his head.


s: Few would be fed, not far his course prolong,


s: Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.


s: - That rings of truth!  More do your people thrive;


s: Than erewhile when I gloried in the page


s: Greece was my lamp:  burnt out for lack of oil;


s: Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!


s: All structures built upon a narrow space


s: Must fall, from having not your hosts for base.


s: O thrice must one be you, to see them shift


s: Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift;


s: With faith, that of privations and spilt blood,


s: Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!


s: And thrice must one be you, to wait release


s: From duress in the swamp of their increase.


s: At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest,


s: A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed


s: Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few;


s: Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,


s: Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains.


s: - Ay, be we faithful to ourselves:  despise


s: Nought but the coward in us!  That way lies


s: The wisdom making passage through our slough.


s: Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;


s: Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait.


s: Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate.


s: That photosphere of our high fountain One,


s: Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun,


s: Philosophy, shall light us in the shade,


s: Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid.


s: Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,


s: Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!


s: God's voice; have there the surety in our aim.


s: They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds,


s: Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.


s: Now let the perils thicken:  clearer seen,


s: Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene.


s: Who never yet of scattered lamps was born


s: To speed a world, a marching world to warn,


s: But sunward from the vivid Many springs,


s: Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.


s: We have seen mighty men ballooning high,


s: He falls; and in his measurement is found


s: To count some inches o'er the common fry.


s: 'Twas not enough to send him climbing sky,


s: Yet 'twas enough above his fellows crowned,


s: Had he less panted.  Let his faithful hound


s: Bark at detractors.  He may walk or lie.


s: Concerns it most ourselves, who with our gas -


s: For Continents--filled to inflation burst.


s: When, driven as herds by their old private thirst,


s: They scorn the brain's wild search for virtuous light.


s: Still rivalling the wild hordes by whom 'twas writ!


s: Sure, this beseems a race of laggard wit,


s: Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air.


s: If more than hands' and armsful be our share,


s: Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit.


s: When old men play the youth to chase the snare?


s: Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes,


s: The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex,


s: Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent;


s: Armed to support her sword;--lest we compose


s: That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks.


s: They served as men, not marshalled kine:


s: And spare the fall'n, before them shone.


s: And clear their course while they fought on.


s: Brought his last gift from o'er the grave!


s: Not yet had History's Aetna smoked the skies,


s: And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained,


s: Across the vacant heavens, and distrained


s: Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear;


s: Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air.


s: Through marching scores of winters racked she lay,


s: Her breasts disported in a glistering spray;


s: She, the land's fount of fruits, enclosed with dust;


s: Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw


s: The throbs of her charged heart before the Just,


s: So worn the harrowed surface had become:


s: And still they deemed the dance above was Law,


s: To roar of the underfloods; and off it sprang,


s: A splendid Maenad, she of the delirious laugh,


s: Her body twisted flames with the smoke-cap crowned;


s: She of the Bacchic foot; the challenger to the fray,


s: Bewitchment for the embrace; who sang, who sang


s: Revolved them, hair, voice, feet, in her carmagnole,


s: As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff,


s: (O ripeness of the time!  O Retribution sure,


s: If but our vital lamp illume us to endure!)


s: Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue,


s: Her bridegroom in descent to her; and they joined,


s: In the face of men they joined:  attest it true,


s: Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal,


s: Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate;


s: She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate:


s: His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed.


s: Read backward on the hoar-frost's brilliant crust;


s: Athirst to kiss, athirst to slay, she stood,


s: For them that hungered, she was nourishing food,


s: Read in her heart, and how before the Just


s: Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke


s: Discarded; and the cleft 'twixt deed and word,


s: The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird,


s: Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence;


s: And hence the talons and the beak of prey;


s: With every sleek convolvement serpentine;


s: The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer,


s: He clasped in this revived, uprisen France,


s: The lightning's upon cloud:  unlit as yet


s: Of seas in the night-wind's whirl; unstirred


s: Her pouch of the centuries' injuries compressed;


s: The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard:


s: Earth's animate full flower she looked, intense


s: Earth's crystal spring to sky:  Earth's warrior Best


s: And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare,


s: Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray


s: But martially nude for hot Bellona's play,


s: And amorous of the loftiest in her view.


s: She sprang from dust to drink of earth's cool dew,


s: Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew,


s: As immortals may be in the mortal sphere.


s: Read through her launching heart, who had lain long


s: With Earth and heard till it became her own


s: Our good Great Mother's eve and matin song:


s: The humming burden of Earth's toil to feed


s: Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth,


s: Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown


s: Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both,


s: Now when she looked, with love's benign delight


s: Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops


s: Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent,


s: As were they winter sedges, broken hoops,


s: Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts,


s: With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains?


s: Recked she that some perverting devil had limned


s: Earth's proudest to spout scorn of the Maker's hand,


s: Who could a day behold these deathly hosts,


s: And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed,


s: Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:-


s: Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame:


s: By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains,


s: Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state,


s: For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains,


s: On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew.


s: Surely a devil's land when that meant death for each!


s: Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus,


s: With all the body's life to plump the leech,


s: Is Nature's way, she knew.  The abominable scene


s: Spat at the skies; and through her veins,


s: Supplied her, stretched supine on the rack,


s: Alive in the shrewd nerves, the seething brains,


s: As one clamped fast, with the interminable senseless blent.


s: Now was her face white waves in the tempest's sharp flame-blink;


s: Of earth's cool dew, and through the vines


s: Frolic in pearly laughter with her young,


s: Watching the healthful, natural, happy signs


s: Where hands of lads and maids like tendrils clung,


s: After their sly shy ventures from the leaf,


s: To drink of life's hot flood, and the crimson streamed.


s: She drank what makes man demon at the draught.


s: Her heavenly lover fled her, and she laughed,


s: For laughter was her spirit's weapon then.


s: The Infernal rose uncalled, he with his crew.


s: As mighty thews burst manacles, she went mad:


s: Her heart a flaring torch usurped her wits.


s: Such enemies of her next-drawn breath she had!


s: To tread her down in her live grave beneath


s: Their dancing floor sunned blind by the Royal wreath,


s: They ringed her steps with crafty prison pits.


s: Without they girdled her, made nest within.


s: There ramped the lion, here entrailed the snake.


s: They forced the cup to her lips when she drank blood;


s: Believing it, in the mother's mind at strain,


s: In the mother's fears, and in young Liberty's wail


s: Alarmed, for her encompassed children's sake,


s: The sole sure way to save her priceless bud.


s: Wherewith, when power had gifted her to prevail,


s: And in compute of sin, was hers the appealing sin.


s: Stained at the mouth, drunk with our common air,


s: The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France


s: At every wild-winged hope struck by mischance


s: Soaring at each faint gleam o'er her abyss.


s: Heard still, to be heard while France shall stand erect,


s: The frontier march she piped her sons, for where


s: She piped her sons the frontier march, the wine


s: Of martial music, History's cherished tune;


s: And they, the saintliest labourers that aye


s: Dropped sweat on soil for bread, took arms and tramped;


s: Or Fortune, harsh schoolmistress with the undrilled:


s: War's ragged pupils; many a wavering line,


s: Torn from the dear fat soil of champaigns hopefully tilled,


s: Torn from the motherly bowl, the homely spoon,


s: The novel scythe, and stand to it on the field;


s: Lie in the furrows, rain-clouds for their tents;


s: Fronting the red artillery straighten spine;


s: Buckle the shiver at sight of comrades strewn;


s: Over an empty platter affect the merrily filled;


s: Die, if the multiple hazards around said die;


s: Downward measure a foeman mightily sized;


s: Laugh at the legs that would run for a life despised;


s: Lyrical on into death's red roaring jaw-gape, steeled


s: Gaily to take of the foe his lesson, and give reply.


s: Cheerful apprentices, they shall be masters soon!


s: Lo, where hurricane flocks of the North-wind rattle their thunder


s: Crumbled to ruin, still gazing a glacial wonder;


s: Turned shamed feet toe to heel on their track at a panic pace.


s: Yesterday's clarion cock scudded hen of the invalid comb;


s: They, the triumphant tonant towering upper, were under;


s: They, violators of home, dared hope an inviolate home;


s: They that had stood for the stroke were the vigorous hewers;


s: Saw the once hearth-reek rabble the scourge of an army dispieced;


s: Fly! was the sportsman's word; and the note of the quarry rang,


s: Sheaves of pale banners drooping hole and shred;


s: The captive brides of valour, Sabine Wives


s: To give their fevered mother air of the lungs.


s: She breathed, and in the breathing craved.


s: And waved for victory, for fresh victory waved:


s: She craved for victory as her daily bread;


s: Now had her glut of vengeance left her grey


s: Of blood, who in her entrails fiercely tore


s: To clutch and squeeze her snakes; herself the more


s: Which dowered her with the flags, the blazing fame,


s: For some bright Sungod adolescent, swelled


s: Till she, mankind's most dreaded, most abhorred,


s: Witless in her demands on Fortune, asked,


s: To have the thing most loathed, the iron lord,


s: Controller and chastiser, under Victory masked.


s: She hugged him in them, feared the scourge they meant,


s: Yet blindly hugged, and hungering built his throne.


s: With curtsey of shut lids and open mouth,


s: In act to beg for sweets expect a loathly stone:


s: See furthermore the Just in his measures weigh


s: Her sufferings and her sins, dispense her meed.


s: False to her bridegroom lord of the miracle day,


s: She fell:  from his ethereal home observed


s: Through love, grown alien love, not moved to plead


s: Against the season's fruit for deadly Seed,


s: But marking how she had aimed, and where she swerved,


s: Why suffered, with a sad consenting thought.


s: Nor would he shun her sullen look, nor monstrous hold


s: She, the long tortured, suddenly freed, distraught,


s: More strongly the divine in him than when


s: The veins and arteries of her, fold in fold,


s: The martyred creature from her crimes; he knew


s: What cowardice in her valour could reside;


s: What strength her weakness covered; what abased


s: Sublimity so illumining, and what raised


s: This wallower in old slime to noblest heights,


s: Day that the celestial grave Recorder hangs


s: With vivid beams indicative to the quick


s: Of all who have felt the vaulted body's pangs


s: Beneath a mind in hopeless soaring sick.


s: She had forgot how, long enslaved, she yearned


s: Forgot her faith in the Great Undiscerned,


s: Whereof she sprang aloft to her Angelical love


s: That day:  and he, the bright day's husband, still with love,


s: Though alien, though to an upper seat retired,


s: Behold a wrangling heart, as 'twere her soul


s: Set at her lips; the blood-drinker's madness fast


s: Her thousand impulses, like torches, coursed


s: To slaughter, else to suicide, enforced.


s: And of what creature, pitied when was plain


s: The burden on the flesh for who disclaims the God,


s: Whence her lost virtue had found refuge strode


s: Her master, saying, 'I only; I who can!'


s: And echoed round her army, now her chain.


s: So learns the nation, closing Anarch's reign,


s: Who looked on him beheld the will of wills,


s: The driver of wild flocks where lions ramped:


s: Beheld War's liveries flee him, like lumped grass


s: Nid-nod to ground beneath the cuffing storm;


s: Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey brass,


s: Reverberant notes and long blew volant Fame.


s: On the quenched volcano's cusp did he take stand,


s: A conquering army's height above the land,


s: Which calls that army offspring of its breast,


s: And sees it mid the starry camps enshrined;


s: And scatter carrion flies off wounds unhealed,


s: The Necessitated came, as comes from out


s: Founts of our being; terrible with doubt,


s: With radiance restorative.  At one stride


s: Athwart the Law he stood for sovereign sway.


s: His brilliancy who neighboured:  vapour they;


s: Vapour what postured statues barred his tread.


s: Far heard and of the carnage discord clear,


s: Globe, sceptre, sword, to enfold, to rule, to smite,


s: Fame blew, and tuned the jangles, bent the knees


s: Were thunder in those heavens and compelled:


s: Such as disordered earth, eclipsed of stars,


s: Endures for sign of Order's calm return,


s: Whereunto she is vowed; and his wreckage-spars,


s: His harried ships, old riotous Ocean lifts alight,


s: Subdued to splendour in his delirant churn.


s: And he, the reader of men, himself unread;


s: Likeness to Godhead.  Whither his flashes hied


s: Hosts fell; what he constructed held rock-fast.


s: So did earth's abjects deem of him that built and clove.


s: If less than an eagle-speeding Jove, than Vulcan more.


s: Lurid with sparks in evanescent showers,


s: Our skies the reflex of its furnace blast.


s: For bride of the miracle day up the midway blue;


s: She from her heavenly lover fallen to serve for feast


s: Of rancours and raw hungers; she, the untrue,


s: With eyes the moonstone portals to her heart:


s: Earth's chosen, crowned, unchallengeable upstart:


s: The trumpet word to awake, transform, renew;


s: Never ensanguined History's lengthened scroll,


s: Aggrandized and begemmed, she outstripped her peers;


s: Like midnight's levying brazier-beacon blazed


s: Defiant to the world, a rally for her sons,


s: Day of the darkness; this man's mate; by him,


s: By him with the rivers of ranked battalions, brave


s: Past mortal, girt:  a march of swords and guns


s: Incessant; his proved warriors; loaded dice


s: He flung on the crested board, where chilly Fears


s: Behold the Reaper's ground, Death sitting grim,


s: Mid shrieks and torrent-hooves; but these,


s: Hail it their hero's wood of lustrous laurel-trees,


s: Unequalled since the world was man they pour


s: A spiky girdle round her; these, her sons,


s: His cataracts at smooth holiday, soon to roar


s: Obstruction shattered at his will or whim:


s: And trampling earth like scornful mastodons.


s: Adoring, under thought of being his mate,


s: These were, and unto the visibly unexcelled,


s: As much of heart as abjects can she gave,


s: Or what of heart the body bears for freight


s: By the flash of his ascending deeds upheld,


s: Which let not feminine pride in him have pause


s: To question where the nobler pride rebelled.


s: Felt his firm hand to wield the giant's mace;


s: Herself whirled upward in an eagle's claws,


s: And if cold Reason pressed her, called him Fate;


s: Offering abashed the servile woman's vow.


s: Till worship of him shone as her last rational state,


s: The slave's apology for gemmed disgrace.


s: Far in her mind that leap from earth to the ghost


s: Midway on high; or felt as a troubled pool;


s: Or as a broken sleep that hunts a dream half lost,


s: Arrested and rebuked by the common school


s: Of daily things for truancy.  She could rejoice


s: Her crowned possessor, and, on every sense


s: Incumbent, Fact, Imperial Fact, her choice,


s: In scorn of barren visions, aims at a glassy void.


s: Who sprang for Liberty once, found slavery sweet;


s: And Tyranny, on alert subservience buoyed,


s: Spurred a blood-mare immeasureably fleet


s: To shoot the transient leagues in a passing wink,


s: Prompt for the glorious bound at the fanged abyss's brink.


s: Scarce felt she that she bled when battle scored


s: On riddled flags the further conjured line;


s: From off the meteor gleam of his waved sword


s: Reflected bright in permanence:  she bled


s: As the Bacchante spills her challengeing wine


s: With whirl o' the cup before the kiss to lip;


s: And bade drudge History in his footprints tread,


s: For pride of sword-strokes o'er slow penmanship:


s: Each step of his a volume:  his sharp word


s: Persistent through the brazen chorus round


s: His thunderous footsteps on the foeman's ground,


s: And now along the dark blue vault might seem


s: Winged migratories having but heaven for home,


s: Now the lone sea-bird's cry down shocks of foam,


s: Beneath a ruthless paw the captive's pang.


s: With view of wide-armed heaven and buds at burst,


s: And midway up, Earth's fluttering little lyre.


s: Even for a glimpse, for even a hope in chained desire


s: As Liberty's murderous mother, cried accursed,


s: France blew to deafness:  for a space she mused;


s: She smoothed a startled look, and sought,


s: Into the enemy's land; artillery, bayonet, lance;


s: His ordering fingers point the dial's to time their ranks:


s: Himself the black storm-cloud, the tempest's bayonet-glaive.


s: Like foam-heads of a loosened freshet bursting banks,


s: By mount and fort they thread to swamp the sluggard plains.


s: Shines his gold-laurel sun, or cloak connivent rains.


s: They press to where the hosts in line and square throng mute;


s: He watchful of their form, the Audacious, the Astute;


s: Eagle to grip the field; to work his craftiest, fox.


s: From his brief signal, straight the stroke of the leveller falls;


s: He waves and the voluble scene is a quagmire shifting blocks;


s: They clash, they are knotted, and now 'tis the deed of the axe on


s: Here away moves a spiky woodland, and yon away sweep


s: Rivers of horse torrent-mad to the shock, and the heap over heap


s: Rolling off sunlight's arrows.  Not mightier Phoebus in ire,


s: Nor deadlier Jove's avengeing right hand, than he of the brain


s: Keen at an enemy's mind to encircle and pierce and constrain,


s: Muffling his own for a fate-charged blow very Gods may admire.


s: Sure to behold are his eagles on high where the conflict raged.


s: Rightly, then, should France worship, and deafen the disaccord


s: Of those who dare withstand an irresistible sword


s: To thwart his predestined subjection of Europe.  Let them submit!


s: With the beat of wings at bars, Earth's fluttering little lyre.


s: No more at midway heaven, but liker midway to the pit:


s: Not singing the spirally upward of rapture, the downward of pain


s: Her strangled thought got breath, with her worship held debate;


s: To yield and sink, yet eye askant the mark she had missed.


s: Over the black-blue rollers of that broad Westerly main,


s: Steady to sky, the light of Liberty glowed


s: In a flaming pillar, that cast on the troubled waters a road


s: For Europe to cross, and see the thing lost subsist.


s: For there 'twas a shepherd led his people, no butcher of sheep;


s: Firmly there the banner he first upreared


s: Stands to rally; and nourishing grain do his children reap


s: From a father beloved in life, in his death revered.


s: Contemplating him and his work, shall a skyward glance


s: Clearer sight of our dreamed and abandoned obtain;


s: Nay, but as if seen in station above the Republic, France


s: Had view of her one-day's heavenly lover again;


s: Saw him amid the bright host looking down on her; knew she had


s: Knew him her judge, knew yonder the spirit preferred;


s: Yonder the base of the summit she strove that day to ascend,


s: Ere cannon mastered her soul, and all dreams had end.


s: The dazzling wizard who would have her bleed


s: On fruitless marsh and snows of spectral gloom


s: For victory that was victory scarce in name.


s: Husky his clarions laboured, and her sighs


s: O'er slaughtered sons were heavier than the prize;


s: Recalling how he stood by Frederic's tomb,


s: With Frederic's country underfoot and spurned:


s: There meditated; till her hope might guess,


s: Albeit his constant star prescribe success,


s: The savage strife would sink, the civil aim


s: To head a mannered world breathe zephyrous


s: Of morning after storm; whereunto she yearned;


s: And Labour's lovely peace, and Beauty's courtly bloom,


s: At such great height, where hero hero topped,


s: Right sanely should the Grand Ascendant think


s: No further leaps at the fanged abyss's brink


s: True Genius takes:  be battle's dice-box dropped!


s: She watched his desert features, hung to hear


s: The honey words desired, and veiled her face;


s: Than call to the march:  for that inveterate Purse


s: Could kindle the extinct, inform a vacant place,


s: It squeezed the globe, insufferably swelled


s: Here flesh, there phantom, livelier after rout:


s: The Seaman piping aye to the rightabout,


s: Distracted Europe's Master, puffed remote


s: Whereon would Europe's Master somewhiles doat,


s: Nor marvel France should veil a seer's face,


s: And call on darkness as a blest retreat.


s: Confront submission:  hostile stirred to heat


s: To the pitiless red mounts of fire afume,


s: As 'twere the world's arteries opened!  Woe the race!


s: Ask wherefore Fortune's vile caprice should balk


s: His panther spring across the foaming salt,


s: From martial sands to the cliffs of pallid chalk!


s: There is no answer:  seed of black defeat


s: She then did sow, and France nigh unto death foredoom.


s: Engirdle, lure and goad him to the chase


s: Along drear leagues of crimson spotting white


s: With mother's tears of France, that he may meet


s: Behind suborned battalions, ranked as wheat


s: Where peeps the weedy poppy, him of the sea;


s: Earth's power to baffle Ocean's power resume;


s: Victorious army crown o'er Victory's fleet;


s: Obnoxious in the vault by Frederic's tomb.


s: Poured streams of Europe's veins the flood


s: Full Rhine or Danube rolls off morning-tide


s: Through shadowed reaches into crimson-dyed:


s: And Rhine and Danube knew her gush of blood


s: Down the plucked roots the deepest in her breast.


s: He tossed her cordials, from his laurels pressed.


s: She drank for dryness thirstily, praised his gifts.


s: The blooded frame a powerful draught uplifts


s: Writhed the devotedness her voice rang wide


s: In cries ecstatic, as of the martyr-Blest,


s: Their spirits issuing forth of bodies racked,


s: While near her heart the sunken sentinel


s: This torture, this anointed, this untracked


s: To mortal source, this alien of his kind;


s: The cataract of the abyss, the star of stars;


s: Whose arts to lay the senses under spell


s: He, did he love her?  France was his weapon, shrewd


s: At edge, a wind in onset:  he loved well


s: His tempered weapon, with the which he hewed


s: Clean to the ground impediments, or hacked,


s: Sure of the blade that served the great man-miracle.


s: He raised her, robed her, gemmed her for his bride,


s: Did but her blood in blindness given exact.


s: Her blood she gave, was blind to him as guide:


s: She quivered at his word, and at his touch


s: Was hound or steed for any mark he espied.


s: He loved her more than little, less than much.


s: In ranked esteem; above the diurnal meal,


s: Above his hoards, while she Imperial Fact embraced,


s: And rose but at command from under heel.


s: Receptive or profuse, were fires he lacked,


s: Whose marrow had expelled their wasteful sparks;


s: Whose mind, the vast machine of endless haste,


s: Took up but solids for its glowing seal.


s: The hungry love, that fish-like creatures feel,


s: Impelled for prize of hooks, for prey of sharks,


s: His night's first quarter sicklied to distaste,


s: In warm enjoyment barely might distract.


s: A head that held an Europe half devoured


s: Taste in the blood's conceit of pleasure soured.


s: Nought save his rounding aim, the means he plied,


s: Death for his cause, to him could point appeal.


s: His mistress was the thing of uses tried.


s: Frigid the netting smile on whom he wooed,


s: That sharp long zig-zag into distance brooked


s: No foot across; a shade his ire provoked.


s: He deemed nought other precious, nor knew he


s: Men's lives and works were due, from their birth's date,


s: To the State's shield and sword, himself the State.


s: He thought for them in mass, as Titan may;


s: For their pronounced well-being bade obey;


s: O'er each obstructive thicket thunderclapped,


s: And straight their easy road to market mapped.


s: Watched Argus to survey the huge preserves


s: He held or coveted; Mars was armed alert


s: At sign of motion; yet his brows were murk,


s: His gorge would surge, to see the butcher's work,


s: The Reaper's field; a sensitive in nerves.


s: Earth's fairest form, he dealt the cancelling blow;


s: Impassioned, still impersonal; to ensure


s: Possession; free of rivals, not their foe.


s: The common Tyrant's frenzies, rancour, spites,


s: He knew as little as men's claim on rights.


s: A kindness for old servants, early friends,


s: Was constant in him while they served his ends;


s: And if irascible, 'twas the moment's reek


s: From fires diverted by some gusty freak.


s: From reckonings of men's tempers, terrors, needs:-


s: Within his hot brain's hammering workshop hummed


s: A thousand furious wheels at whirr, untired


s: And did they grate, he spake, and cannon fired:


s: Proved by prostration culpable.  His dispense


s: His passive was of ceaseless labour formed.


s: So found this Tyrant sanction and repose;


s: Preventive fencings with the foul intent


s: Occult, by him observed and foiled betimes,


s: Let fool historians chronicle as crimes.


s: His blows were dealt to clear the way he went:


s: Too busy sword and mind for needless blows.


s: On ground perceived; in heaven but rays or rains;


s: For rule of men the choice of bait or goads.


s: The statesman steered the despot to large tasks;


s: The despot drove the statesman on short roads.


s: For Order's cause he laboured, as inclined


s: A soldier's training and his Euclid mind.


s: That creature, woman, was the sofa soft,


s: When warriors their dusty armour doffed,


s: And read their manuals for the making truce


s: With rosy frailties framed to reproduce.


s: For the utmost extract he might have and hive,


s: Wherewith to marshal force; and in like scheme,


s: Benign shone Hymen's torch on young love's dream.


s: The disputant in words his eye dismayed:


s: He loathed his land's divergent parties, loth


s: To grant them speech, they were such idle troops;


s: The friable and the grumous, dizzards both.


s: Men were good sticks his mastery wrought from hoops;


s: Some serviceable, none credible on oath.


s: In beds he scorned, and led where they should lie.


s: Magician he could be by planned surprise.


s: For do they see the deuce in human guise,


s: As men's acknowledged head appears the deuce,


s: And they will toil with devilish craft and zeal.


s: Among them certain vagrant wits that had


s: But could be dangerous fire-flies for a brain


s: Subdued by fact, still amorous of the inane.


s: With a breath he blew them out, to beat their wings


s: And France had sense of vacancy in Light.


s: That is the soul's dead darkness, making clutch


s: Wild hands for aid at muscles within touch;


s: Adding to slavery's chain the stringent twist;


s: Even when it brings close surety that aright


s: She reads her Tyrant through his golden mist;


s: Perceives him fast to a harsher Tyrant bound;


s: Self-ridden, self-hunted, captive of his aim;


s: Material grandeur's ape, the Infernal's hound;


s: The voice as through the brazen tube of Fame.


s: She saw the Lustrous, her great lord, appear


s: Through that smoked glass her last privation brought


s: To point her critic eye and spur her thought:


s: A spirit that breathed but in earth's atmosphere.


s: The mountain tower capped by the floating cloud;


s: A nursery screamer where dialectics ruled:


s: Mannerless, graceless, laughterless, unlike


s: Herself in all, yet with such power to strike,


s: That she the various features she could scan


s: Dared not to sum, though seeing:  and befooled


s: By power which beamed omnipotent, she bowed,


s: Subservient as roused echo round his guns.


s: He sparkled, by no sage Athene schooled.


s: Partly she read her riddle, stricken and pained;


s: But irony, her spirit's tongue, restrained.


s: Enslaved, when most detectively endowed,


s: Like rain-drops down a statue cast in bronze:


s: Protesting, but with slavish senses charmed.


s: Her warrior, chief among the valorous great


s: In arms he was, dispelling shades of blame,


s: With radiance palpable in fruit and weight.


s: Heard she reproach, his victories blared response;


s: His victories bent the Critic to acclaim,


s: As with fresh blows upon a ringing sconce.


s: Or heard she from scarred ranks of jolly growls


s: His veterans dwarf their reverence and, like owls,


s: Their idol for some genial trick or fault,


s: Again she took her breath from them who bore


s: For one the daemon fierily filled and hurled,


s: Her supreme player of man's primaeval game.


s: The daemon filled him, and he filled her sons;


s: Strung them to stature over human height,


s: As march the standards down the smoky fight;


s: Earth's toughest, seasons, elements, tame;


s: Count death the smallest of their debts:


s: To read her riddle, for these her offspring's sake; -


s: The lost to honour, in his glory clothed,


s: Else naked, shamed in sight of men, self-loathed; -


s: That she should quench her thought, nor worship less


s: Than ere she bled on sands or snows and knew


s: The slave's alternative, to worship or to rue!


s: Bright from the shell of that much limited man,


s: Her hero, like the falchion out of sheath,


s: Like soul that quits the tumbled body, soared:


s: And France, impulsive, nuptial with his plan,


s: Once more.  Exultingly her heart went forth,


s: Next, as the blessed harvest after years of blight,


s: Sit, the Great Emperor, to be known the Good!


s: Lean from the chase that barked his contraband,


s: To strew the profitless deeps and rot beneath,


s: Slung northward, for a hunted beast's retort


s: On sovereign power; there his final stand,


s: Among the perjured Scythian's shaggy horde,


s: Had taken; flashing thence repellent teeth,


s: Though Europe's Master Europe's Rebel banned


s: To be earth's outcast, ocean's lord and sport.


s: Unmoved might seem the Master's taunted sword.


s: Northward his dusky legions nightly slipped,


s: As on the map of that all-provident head;


s: He luting Peace the while, like morning's cock


s: The quiet day to round the hours for bed;


s: No pastoral shepherd sweeter to his flock.


s: Then Europe first beheld her Titan stripped.


s: To what vast length of limb and mounds of thews,


s: How trained to scale the eminences, pluck


s: Those timely incidents by men named luck,


s: Through forethought that defied the Fates to choose,


s: And France recounted with her comic smile


s: Wherewith her two-faced Master could amuse


s: A dupe he charmed in sunny beams to bask,


s: The lightning moment of the cast-off mask.


s: Splendours of earth repeating heaven's at set


s: Of sun down mountain cloud in masses arched;


s: Unmatched the copious multitudes; unknown


s: To Gallia's over-runner, Rome's inveterate foe,


s: Such hosts; all one machine for overthrow,


s: Coruscant from the Master's hand, compact


s: As reasoned thoughts in the Master's head; were shown


s: Yon lightning moment when his acme might


s: Blazed o'er the stream that cuts the sandy tract


s: Borussian from Sarmatia's famished flat;


s: The century's flower; and off its pinnacled throne,


s: Rayed servitude on Europe's ball of sight.


s: Behind the Northern curtain-folds he passed.


s: There heard hushed France her muffled heart beat fast


s: Against the hollow ear-drum, where she sat


s: In expectation's darkness, until cracked


s: The straining curtain-seams:  a scaly light


s: The trained, the trustful, sanguine, proud,


s: That Northern curtain took them, as the seas


s: Gulp the great ships to give back shipmen white.


s: With barren eyes and mouth, the mother's loss;


s: The bolt from her abandoned heaven sped;


s: Paean to sky, leapt over that vast grave.


s: Its shadow-points against her sacred land converged.


s: And him, her yoke-fellow, her black lord, her fate,


s: In doubt, in fevered hope, in chills of hate,


s: Then pressed the auspicious relics on her lips,


s: His withered slave for foregone miracles urged.


s: And he, whom now his ominous halo's round,


s: A three parts blank decrescent sickle, crowned,


s: The realm of Darkness with its Prince's air;


s: Proved criminal by the sceptic seen to cower


s: Beside the generous face of that frail flower.


s: Desire and terror then had each of each:


s: His crown and sword were staked on the magic stroke;


s: Her blood she gave as one who loved her leech;


s: And both did barter under union's cloak.


s: Of either's aid, distrust in trust did breed.


s: Their traffic instincts hooded their live wits


s: Evolved.  The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove.


s: Her awe of him his dread of her invoked:


s: His nature with her shivering faith ran yoked.


s: What wisdom counselled, Policy declined;


s: All perils dared he save the step behind.


s: One spark of radiance blurred, his orb was wrecked.


s: Stripped to the despot upstart, for success


s: He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness.


s: He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught,


s: While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught


s: He held in hand, while losing it; pressed advance,


s: Pricked for her lees the veins of wasted France;


s: Who, had he stayed to husband her, had spun


s: The strength he taxed unripened for his throw,


s: On fields where palsying Pyrrhic laurels grow,


s: Flung lives in angry volleys, bloody lightnings, flung


s: With victories clipped his eagle's wings.


s: By the hands that built him up was he undone:


s: By the star aloft, which was his ram's-head will


s: Within; by the toppling throne the soldier won;


s: By the yeasty ferment of what once had been,


s: To cloud a rational mind for present things;


s: By his own force, the suicide in his mill.


s: When giants their last lesson have to learn.


s: Fighting against an end he could discern,


s: He called from his worn slave's abundant springs:


s: But harsh to have her worship counted out


s: In human coin, her vital rivers drained,


s: Her infant forests felled, commanded die


s: The decade thousand deaths for his Imperial seat,


s: Where throning he her faith in him maintained;


s: Was triumph; and what strength in her remained


s: To head against the ultimate foreseen rout,


s: Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will,


s: In Python's coils, the Master Craftsman still;


s: The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly,


s: The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout,


s: The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers,


s: Striking from black disaster starry showers.


s: Her supreme player of man's primaeval game,


s: He won his harnessed victim's rapturous shout,


s: When every move was mortal to her frame,


s: Her prayer to life that stricken he might lie,


s: She to exchange his laurels for earth's flowers.


s: The innumerable whelmed him, and he fell:


s: Ere ceased the lullaby of his passing bell,


s: The shades enclosed him, and he fired the shades.


s: The fount of miracles from drought-dust arose,


s: Where marvels lightened through the alternate hours


s: And winged o'er human earth's heroical shone.


s: Across the friendly fields of smoke and rage,


s: A broken structure bore his furious powers;


s: The man no more, the Warrior Chief the same;


s: Match for all rivals; in himself but flame


s: Of an outworn lamp, to illumine nought anon.


s: Yet loud as when he first showed War's effete


s: Their Schoolman off his eagre mounted high,


s: And summoned to subject who dared compete,


s: Discoursed of sulphur earth to curtained sky.


s: Where armies of assailant vapours thronged,


s: His glory's trappings laid on them:  comes night,


s: From his anterior splendours, and shall seem


s: Day instant, Day's own lord in the furnace gleam,


s: The virulent quiver on ravished eyes prolonged,


s: When severed darkness, all flaminical bright,


s: Slips vivid eagles linked in rapid flight;


s: Which bring at whiles the lionly far roar,


s: To speed across a cowering world once more,


s: Superb in ordered floods, his lordly flags.


s: His name on silence thundered, on the obscure


s: Lightened; it haunted morn and even-song:


s: With shudderings and with thrillings, hung unsure.


s: Snapped was the chord that made the resonant bow,


s: In France, abased and like a shrunken corse;


s: From the highest fallen, stagnant off her source;


s: Condemned to hear the nations' hostile mirth;


s: See curtained heavens, and smell a sulphurous earth;


s: Which told how evermore shall tyrant Force


s: The song of Liberty in her hearing spoke


s: A foreign tongue; Earth's fluttering little lyre


s: Unlike, but like the raven's ravening croak.


s: Not till her breath of being could aspire


s: Anew, this loved and scourged of Angels found


s: Our common brotherhood in sight and sound:


s: And dim aloft her young Angelical waved.


s: She swung; her soul desired, her senses craved.


s: They pricked her dreams, while oft her skies were dun


s: They drew the nature having need of pride


s: He seen like some rare treasure-galleon,


s: Hull down, with masts against the Western hues.


s: The clarion tongue?  Where is the bold proud face?


s: There is horrible convulsion, smothered din,


s: As of one that in a grave-cloth struggles to be free.


s: Black thunder plants his feet and ploughs


s: Who met in heaven the irreparable mischance.


s: The shrewd quick lips to laugh and kiss,


s: Ever invoking fire from heaven, the fire


s: Has grasped her, unconsumable, but framed


s: For all the ecstasies of suffering dire.


s: For outrage:  Mother of Luxury, stripped stark:


s: Mother of Heroes, bondsmen:  thro' the rains,


s: Across her boundaries, lo the league-long chains!


s: Fond Mother of her martial youth; they pass,


s: Are spectres in her sight, are mown as grass!


s: Mother of Honour, and dishonoured:  Mother


s: Of Glory, she condemned to crown with bays


s: Her victor, and be fountain of his praise.


s: Is there another curse?  There is another:


s: Mother of Reason? she that sees them mown


s: Like grass, her young ones!  Yea, in the low groan


s: And under the fixed thunder of this hour


s: Which holds the animate world in one foul blot


s: Tranced circumambient while relentless Power


s: Beaks at her heart and claws her limbs down-thrown,


s: She, with the plungeing lightnings overshot,


s: With madness for an armour against pain,


s: With milkless breasts for little ones athirst,


s: And round her all her noblest dying in vain,


s: Gives answer of the cause of her great woe,


s: ''Tis thus they reap in blood, in blood who sow:


s: 'This is the sum of self-absolved faults.'


s: Doubt not that thro' her grief, with sight supreme,


s: Thro' her delirium and despair's last dream,


s: Thro' pride, thro' bright illusion and the brood


s: The high strong light within her, tho' she bleeds,


s: Traces the letters of returned misdeeds.


s: She sees what seed long sown, ripened of late,


s: Bears this fierce crop; and she discerns her fate


s: Off one disastrous impulse:  for of waves


s: Our life is, and our deeds are pregnant graves


s: Blown rolling to the sunset from the dawn.


s: Ah, what a dawn of splendour, when her sowers


s: Went forth and bent the necks of populations


s: Wove her the starry wreath that earthward lowers


s: Her legions traversed North and South and East,


s: Of triumph they enjoyed the glutton's feast:


s: They grafted the green sprig, they lopped the oak.


s: They caught by the beard the tempests, by the scalp


s: The icy precipices, and clove sheer through


s: The heart of horror of the pinnacled Alp,


s: They were the earthquake and the hurricane,


s: The lightnings and the locusts, plagues of blight,


s: Plagues of the revel:  they were Deluge rain,


s: And dreaded Conflagration; lawless Might.


s: Death writes a reeling line along the snows,


s: Where under frozen mists they may be tracked,


s: And Gods:  they were of god and beast compact:


s: Abhorred of all.  Yet, how they sucked the teats


s: Whose eagles, angrier than their oriflamme,


s: Flushed the vext earth with blood, green earth forgets.


s: The gay young generations mask her grief;


s: Where bled her children hangs the loaded sheaf.


s: Forgetful is green earth; the Gods alone


s: By their great memories the Gods are known.


s: They are with her now, and in her ears, and known.


s: 'Tis they that cast her to the dust for Strength,


s: Their slave, to feed on her fair body's length,


s: That once the sweetest and the proudest shone;


s: Her limbs, as were the anguish-taking breath


s: Gone out of her in the insufferable descent


s: From her high chieftainship; as were she death,


s: Who hears a voice of justice, feels the knife


s: Of torture, drinks all ignominy of life.


s: They are with her, and the painful Gods might weep,


s: If ever rain of tears came out of heaven


s: To flatter Weakness and bid conscience sleep,


s: Viewing the woe of this Immortal, driven


s: For the soul's life to drain the maddening cup


s: The bountiful fair land of vine and grain,


s: Of wit and grace and ardour, and strong roots,


s: Furrowed to likeness of the dim grey main


s: Behold, the Gods are with her, and are known.


s: No more:  them half-eyed apathy may loan


s: Whom the just Gods abandon have no light,


s: They rest, they smile and rest; have earned perchance


s: And so goes out the soul.  But not of France.


s: She cries for grief, and to the Gods she cries,


s: For fearfully their loosened hands chastize,


s: Ravage her flesh from scourges merciless,


s: Among their roll of gifts; for Strength she yearns.


s: For Strength, her idol once, too long her toy.


s: Lo, Strength is of the plain root-Virtues born:


s: Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in scorn,


s: It is the offspring of the modest years,


s: The gift of sire to son, thro' those firm laws


s: Which we name Gods; which are the righteous cause,


s: The cause of man, and manhood's ministers.


s: Could France accept the fables of her priests,


s: Who blest her banners in this game of beasts,


s: And now bid hope that heaven will intercede


s: She would find comfort in their opiates:


s: Mother of Reason! can she cheat the Fates?


s: Would she, the champion of the open mind,


s: The Omnipotent's prime gift--the gift of growth -


s: Consent even for a night-time to be blind,


s: And sink her soul on the delusive sloth,


s: Call one poor shade of laughter in the light


s: Of her unwavering lamp to mark what things


s: The world puts faith in, careless of the truth:


s: What silly puppet-bodies danced on strings,


s: Attached by credence, we appear in sooth,


s: When the whole tragic tale hangs on a broken blade!


s: She swung the sword for centuries; in a day


s: It slipped her, like a stream cut off from source.


s: She struck a feeble hand, and tried to pray,


s: Clamoured of treachery, and had recourse


s: To drunken outcries in her dream that Force


s: Was she not formed to conquer?  The bright plumes


s: Transcendent in her foundries, Arts and looms,


s: Had France to fear the vengeance of the Gods?


s: Her faith was on her battle-roll of names


s: Sheathed in the records of old war; with dance


s: And song she thrilled her warriors and her dames,


s: Embracing her Dishonour:  gave him France


s: From head to foot, France present and to come,


s: So she might hear the trumpet and the drum -


s: On yon stout marching Schoolmen of the North.


s: Strength failed her, faithful to himself the first:


s: Her dream is done, and she can read the sky,


s: And she can take into her heart the worst


s: Of days that made her as the man she served


s: Buying the trickster, by the trickster bought,


s: Still the Gods love her, for that of high aim


s: Is this good France, the bleeding thing they stripe.


s: She shall rise worthier of her prototype


s: Thro' her abasement deep; the pain that runs


s: From nerve to nerve some victory achieves.


s: They lie like circle-strewn soaked Autumn-leaves


s: Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons!


s: And of their death her life is:  of their blood


s: From many streams now urging to a flood,


s: No more divided, France shall rise afresh.


s: Of them she learns the lesson of the flesh:-


s: The lesson writ in red since first Time ran,


s: That till the chasing out of its last vice,


s: The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice.


s: Thou suffering of the wounds that will not slay,


s: Wounds that bring death but take not life away! -


s: Stand fast and hearken while thy victors boast:


s: Hearken, and loathe that music evermore.


s: Slip loose thy garments woven of pride and shame:


s: The torture lurks in them, with them the blame


s: Shall pass to leave thee purer than before.


s: Conceived in the past days of sin, and born


s: Heirs of disease and arrogance and scorn,


s: Surrender, yield the weight of thy great ghost,


s: Like wings on air, to what the heavens proclaim


s: With trumpets from the multitudinous mounds


s: Where peace has filled the hearing of thy sons:


s: Each new discernment of the undying ones,


s: Do thou stoop to these graves here scattered wide


s: Along thy fields, as sunless billows roll;


s: These ashes have the lesson for the soul.


s: 'Die to thy Vanity, and strain thy Pride,


s: Strip off thy Luxury:  that thou may'st live,


s: Die to thyself,' they say, 'as we have died


s: From dear existence and the foe forgive,


s: Nor pray for aught save in our little space


s: To warn good seed to greet the fair earth's face.'


s: O Mother! take their counsel, and so shall


s: The broader world breathe in on this thy home,


s: Light clear for thee the counter-changing dome,


s: Strength give thee, like an ocean's vast expanse


s: Off mountain cliffs, the generations all,


s: Not whirling in their narrow rings of foam,


s: But as a river forward.  Soaring France!


s: Now may'st thou gather humankind in fee:


s: Now prove that Reason is a quenchless scroll;


s: And bleeding head us thro' the troubles of the sea.


s: Are gone on flow with the day that winked,


s: With the night that spanned at golden gates.


s: Mothers, they leave us, quickening seed;


s: Pearly are they till the pale inherited stain


s: Deepens in us, and the mirrors they form on their flow


s: Darken to feature and nature:  a volumed chain,


s: Sequent of issue, in various eddies they show.


s: Theirs is the Book of the River of Life, to read


s: Leaf by leaf by reapers of long-sown seed:


s: There doth our shoot up to light from a spiriting sane


s: Stand as a tree whereon numberless clusters grow:


s: Legible there how the heart, with its one false move


s: Our fervid heart has filled that Book in chief;


s: Our fitful heart a wild reflection views;


s: Our craving heart of passion suckling grief


s: Disowns the author's work it must peruse;


s: Inconscient in its leap to wreak the deed,


s: A round of harvests red from crimson seed,


s: It marks the current Hours show leaf by leaf,


s: Though sometimes it may think what novel light


s: Will strike their faces when the mind shall write.


s: Succourful daughters of men are the rosed and starred


s: Revolving Twelves in their fluent germinal rings,


s: Despite the burden to chasten, abase, depose.


s: Fallen on France, as the sweep of scythe over sward,


s: They breathed in her ear their voice of the crystal springs,


s: That run from a twilight rise, from a twilight close,


s: Through alternate beams and glooms, rejoicingly young.


s: Only to Earth's best loved, at the breathless turns


s: Where Life in fold of the Shadow reclines unstrung,


s: And a ghostly lamp of their moment's union burns,


s: Will such pure notes from the fountain-head be sung.


s: Voice of Earth's very soul to the soul she would see renewed:


s: A song that sought no tears, that laid not a touch on the breast


s: Sobbing aswoon and, like last foxgloves' bells upon ferns


s: In sandy alleys of woodland silence, shedding to bare.


s: Daughters of Earth and men, they piped of her natural brood;


s: Her patient helpful four-feet; wings on the flit or in nest;


s: Paws at our old-world task to scoop a defensive lair;


s: Snouts at hunt through the scented grasses; enhavened scuts


s: Pant for joy of a sunlight driving the fielders to bower.


s: Sharpened in silver by one chance breeze is the olive's grey;


s: A royal-mantle floats, a red fritillary hies;


s: The bee, for whom no flower of garden or wild has nay,


s: Noises, heard if but named, so hot is the trade he plies.


s: Processions beneath green arches of herbage, the long colonnades;


s: Homely are they for a lowly look on bedewed grass-blades,


s: On citied fir-droppings, on twisted wreaths of the worm in dirt.


s: Does nought so loosen our sight from the despot heart, to receive


s: The motive, yet servant, of energy; simple as morn and eve;


s: Treasureless, fetterless; free of the bonds of a great conceit:


s: Unwounded even by cruel blows on a body that writhes;


s: Nor whimpering under misfortune; elusive of obstacles; prompt


s: Creatures of forest and mead, Earth's essays in being, all kinds


s: Bound by the navel-knot to the Mother, never astray,


s: They in the ear upon ground will pour their intuitive minds,


s: Cut man's tangles for Earth's first broad rectilinear way:


s: Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots,


s: Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air;


s: Yet the like aerial growths may chance be the delicate sprays,


s: Infant of Earth's most urgent in sap, her fierier zeal


s: For entry on Life's upper fields:  and soul thus flourishing pays


s: Her, from a nerveless well among stagnant pools of the dry,


s: Through her good aim at divine, shall commune with Earth remake;


s: Fraternal unto sororial, her, where abashed she may lie,


s: Divinest of man shall clasp; a world out of darkness awake,


s: As it were with the Resurrection's eyelids uplifted, to see


s: Honour in shame, in substance the spirit, in that dry fount


s: Jets of the songful ascending silvery-bright water-tree


s: Spout, with our Earth's unbaffled resurgent desire for the mount,


s: However respersive the blow and nigh on infernal the fall,


s: The chastisement drawn down on us merited:  are we of worth


s: Amid our satanic excrescences, this, for the less than a call,


s: Will Earth reprime, man cherish; the God who is in us and round,


s: Consenting, the God there seen.  Impiety speaks despair;


s: Religion the virtue of serving as things of the furrowy ground,


s: Debtors for breath while breath with our fellows in service we


s: From station, lopped of an arm, astounded, lone,


s: Reading late History as a foul misprint:


s: At strife commingled in her frame convulsed;


s: Shame of her broken sword, a ravening gall;


s: Pain of the limb where once her warm blood pulsed;


s: These tortures to distract her underneath


s: Her whelmed Aurora's shade.  But in that space


s: Feeling against her heart life's bitter probe


s: For life, she saw how children of her race,


s: The many sober sons and daughters, plied,


s: By cottage lamplight through the water-globe,


s: By simmering stew-pots, by the serious looms,


s: Afield, in factories, with the birds astir,


s: Their nimble feet and fingers; not denied


s: Refreshful chatter, laughter, galliard songs.


s: So like Earth's indestructible they were,


s: That wrestling with its anguish rose her pride,


s: To feel where in each breast the thought of her,


s: On whom the circle Hours laid leaded thongs,


s: Was constant; spoken sometimes in low tone


s: A shortened breath:  and they were her loved own;


s: Nor ever did they waste their strength with tears,


s: Though mainly they were charged to pay her debt,


s: The Mother having conscience in arrears;


s: Else hearken to her weaponed children's moan


s: Of stifled rage invoking vengeance:  hell's,


s: If heaven should fail the counter-wave that swells


s: In blood and brain for retribution swift.


s: Those helped not:  wings to her soul were these who yet


s: Could welcome day for labour, night for rest,


s: Enrich her treasury, built of cheerful thrift,


s: And likened to Earth's humblest were Earth's best.


s: Brooding on her deep fall, the many strings


s: Which formed her nature set a thought on Kings,


s: As aids that might the low-laid cripple lift;


s: And one among them hummed devoutly leal,


s: While passed the sighing breeze along her breast.


s: Of Kings by the festive vanquishers rammed down


s: Her gorge since fell the Chief, she knew their crown;


s: Upon her through long seasons was its grasp,


s: And carves a face of abscess where was fruit


s: Her radiant leap above the slopes acute,


s: Bid her walk History backward over gaps;


s: The breast's desires of an intemperate wench,


s: She flung them:  she was France:  nor with far frown


s: Her lover from the embrace of her refrained:


s: Struck deafness at her heavens, and they waned


s: The intemperate summoned up her trumpet days,


s: Her treasure-galleon's wondrous freight.


s: The cannon-name she sang and shrieked; transferred


s: Her soul's allegiance; o'er the Tyrant slurred,


s: Tranced with the zeal of her first fawning gaze,


s: To clasp his trophy flags and hail him Saint.


s: The virgin who conceived a France when funeral glooms


s: Across a land aquake with sharp disseverance hung:


s: Conceived, and under stress of battle brought her forth;


s: Crowned her in purification of feud and foeman's taint;


s: Taught her to feel her blood her being, know her worth,


s: Have joy of unity:  the Jeanne bescreeched, bescoffed,


s: Through centuries a star in vapour-folds aloft.


s: Earth's chosen, Earth's throb on divine:


s: Through mist, out of swamp-fires' lures release,


s: Youth on the forehead, the rough right way


s: Seen to be footed:  for them the heart's peace,


s: By the mind's war won for a permanent miracle day.


s: And sucked its essence:  warmth for righteous work,


s: She had no self but France:  the sainted man


s: No France but self.  Him warrior and clerk,


s: Free of his iron clutch; and him her young,


s: For the visioned treasure-galleon astrain;


s: Sent zenithward on bass and treble tongue,


s: Till solely through his glory France was prized.


s: Earth's truest, earth's pure fount from the main;


s: Those hours of slavish Empire would recall;


s: Start to the softened, tremulous bugle-blare


s: Across the storied fields of trampled grain,


s: Blowing the rally against a Caesar's reign.


s: Her soul's protesting sobs she drowned to swear


s: Whose nimbus was her crown; and be again


s: None knowing; sight to dazzle, voice to stun.


s: Rearward she stepped, with thirst for Europe's van;


s: To be shattered, if the material dream propels.


s: For the slow measure timed her peal of bells.


s: Thereof was the cannon-name a mockery round her hills;


s: Weak as the final echo off a giant's bawl:


s: Her history blotted; her proud mantle rent;


s: Knelling the spot where Gallic soil defiled


s: Showed her sons' valour as a frenzied child


s: Word that her mind must bear, her heart put under ban,


s: Stamped with her new Saint's name:  and all his host


s: A wattled flock the foeman's dogs between!


s: Mark where a credible ghost pulls bridle to view that bare


s: Corpse of a field still reddening cloud, and alive in its throes


s: Beneath her Purgatorial Saint's evocative stare:


s: Brand on his name, the gulf of his glory, his Legend's close.


s: A lustreless Phosphor heading for daybeam Night's dead-born,


s: His underworld eyeballs grip the cast of the land for a fray


s: Even as the misty sun growing moon that a frost enrings,


s: The black double-headed are round their flanks.


s: Nor is aught of an equipollent conflict seen, nor the weaker's


s: This is the ground foremarked, and the day; their leader modestly


s: Displayed; they haul, they rend, as in some orderly office


s: And a timed artillery speaks full-mouthed on a stuttering feeble


s: Can it be France, an army of France, tricked, netted, convulsive,


s: It is gapped through the mass midway, bare ribs and dust ere the


s: The France of the fury was there, the thing he had wielded, whose


s: From a blast of eyeballs hotter than speech,


s: The France here laid in her bloody ditch,


s: Through the Legend passing human puffed.


s: Credible ghost of the field which from him descends,


s: Each dark anniversary day will its father return,


s: Haling his shadow to spy where the Legend ends,


s: That penman trumpeter's part in the wreck discern.


s: There, with the cup it presents at her lips, she stands,


s: France, with her future staked on the word it may pledge.


s: The vengeance urged of desire a reserve countermands;


s: The patience clasped totters hard on the precipice edge.


s: Lopped of an arm, mother love for her own springs quick,


s: To curdle the milk in her breasts for the young they feed,


s: At thought of her single hand, and the lost so nigh.


s: Mother love for her own, who raised her when she lay sick


s: Nigh death, and would in like fountains fruitlessly bleed,


s: Withholds the fling of her heart on the further die.


s: Of love is wisdom.  Is it great love, then wise


s: Will our wild heart be, though whipped unto madness more


s: By its mentor's counselling voice than thoughtfully reined.


s: To make her heavens remorseful, she restrained


s: And smoothly, with no countenance of hate,


s: Her conqueror she could scan to measure.  Thence


s: The strange new Winter stream of ruling sense,


s: Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse,


s: Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid;


s: Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow;


s: A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade.


s: For sign of the distraught, and took her blow


s: Her nature's many strings hot gusts did jar


s: Compel the bride's embrace of her stern groom,


s: Nest of the Furies their first nuptial bed,


s: They not the less were mated and proclaimed


s: The rational their issue.  Then she rose.


s: See how the rush of southern Springtide glows


s: Illuminated with one breath.  The maimed,


s: The comic dimples round her April mouth,


s: Unshadowed save when somewhiles she looked East.


s: Our footing is on ground though all else fail:


s: To walk within her Laws and have her light.


s: Choice of the life or death lies in ourselves;


s: There is no fate but when unreason lours.


s: Those rosed and starred revolving Twelves


s: While leashed to brain the heart of France the Fair


s: Beats tempered music and its lead subserves.


s: Washed from her eyes the Napoleonic glare,


s: Not the clear sight of Earth's blunt actual swerves


s: When her lost look, as on a wave of wine,


s: Rolls Eastward, and the mother-flag descries


s: Despite her brooding thought, her nightlong sighs,


s: The forest's Infant; the strong hand for toil;


s: The patient brain in twilights when astray;


s: Shrewdest of heads to foil and counterfoil;


s: The sceptic and devout; the potent sword;


s: With will and armed to help in hewing way


s: For Europe's march; and of the most golden chord


s: Excellent mistress.  Yea, she sees, and can admire;


s: Still seeing in what walks the Gallia leads;


s: And with what shield upon Alsace-Lorraine


s: Her wary sister's doubtful look misreads


s: A mother's throbs for her lost:  so loved:  so near:


s: Magnetic.  Hard the course for her to steer,


s: The leap against the sharpened spikes restrain.


s: For the belted Overshadower hard the course,


s: On whom devolves the spirit's touchstone, Force:


s: Which is the strenuous arm, to strike inclined,


s: That too much adamantine makes the mind;


s: Forgets it coin of Nature's rich Exchange;


s: Contracts horizons within present sight:


s: Who lay with Earth and heard the notes she sang,


s: And heard her truest sing them; she may reach


s: Heights yet unknown of nations; haply teach


s: A thirsting world to learn 'tis 'she who can.'


s: The nation flowering conscience o'er the beast;


s: With heart expurged of rancour, tame of greeds;


s: With the winged mind from fang and claw released; -


s: Will such a land be seen?  It will be seen; -


s: Shall stand adjudged our foremost and Earth's Queen.


s: Acknowledgement that she of God proceeds


s: The invisible makes visible, as his priest,


s: Yet strong in arms, yet strong in self-control,


s: Known valiant, her maternal throbs repressed,


s: Discarding vengeance, Giant with a soul; -


s: Beneath the lights, my faith in God is best; -


s: In all that servant earth to heavenly bidding brings,


s: Illume her land, and take the royal seat


s: Unto the strong self-conqueror assigned.


s: But ah, when speaks a loaded breath the double name,


s: Her constant Angel eyes her heart's quick beat,


s: The thrill of shadow coursing through her frame.


s: Like wind among the ranks of amber wheat.


s: Observes her face, as shepherds note the morn,


s: That for the flock in their grave hearing rings.


s: Specked overhead the imminent vulture wings


s: At poise, one fatal movement indiscreet,


s: Sprung from the Aetna passions' mad revolts,


s: Draws down; the midnight hovers to descend;


s: Hangs curtained terrors round her next day's door,


s: Death's emblems for the breast of Europe flings;


s: The breast that waits a spark to fire her store.


s: Shall, then, the great vitality, France,


s: Now may she tune her nature's many strings


s: It was the foreign France, the unruly, feared;


s: Not that sharp intellect with fire endowed


s: To cleave our webs, run lightnings through our cloud;


s: Not virtual France, the France benevolent,


s: The chivalrous, the many-stringed, sublime


s: At intervals, and oft in sweetest chime;


s: This France could no antagonist disesteem,


s: To spurn at heel and confiscate her brood.


s: Albeit a waverer between heart and mind,


s: And laurels won from sky or plucked from blood,


s: Which wither all the wreath when intertwined,


s: Beloved of Earth, her heart should feel at length


s: How much unto Earth's offspring it doth owe.


s: Obstructions are for levelling, have we strength;


s: Rejected be the wrath that keeps unhealed


s: Her panting wound; to higher Courts appealed


s: The wrongs discerned of higher:  Europe waits:


s: She chooses God or gambles with the Fates.


s: For yet he breathes whom less her heart forswears


s: While trembles its desire to thwart her mind:


s: What figure with recurrent footstep fares


s: Around those memoried tracks of scarlet mud,


s: By lantern-light, as dragons' teeth are sown?


s: Of bleeding pride the piercing seer is blind.


s: But, cleared her eyes of that ensanguined scud


s: Distorting her true features, to be shown


s: As light enkindles light when heavenly earthly mates,


s: The flame of pure immits the flame of pure,


s: Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow;


s: And men are in the secret with the spheres,


s: Now nation looks to nation, that may live


s: Their common nurseling, like the torrent's flower,


s: Shaken by foul Destruction's fast-piled heap.


s: Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour,


s: Whereby more than her lost one will she reap;


s: To count it less than her superb reward.


s: Our Europe, where is debtor each to each,


s: Pass measure of excess, and war is Cain,


s: Will hail the rare example for their theme;


s: Give response, as rich foliage to the breeze;


s: In their entrusted nurseling know them one:


s: Like a brave vessel under press of steam,


s: Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas,


s: Plucked by the heavens forlorn of present sun,


s: Will drive through darkness, and, with faith supreme,


s: Have sight of haven and the crowded quays.


s: How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed


s: Each over other as they neighboured home,


s: Fronting the day's descent across green slopes,


s: And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.


s: Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess,


s: Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,


s: It signalled some adventurous master-trick


s: Lest it might be their godhead undermined,


s: For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,


s: Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar


s: While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees,


s: With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;


s: Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched,


s: And both upon her bosom shaken to speech,


s: Burst the hot story out of throats of both,


s: Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut


s: The hurried spout.  And as when drifting storm


s: A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam


s: Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils,


s: Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,


s: Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last


s: With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,


s: Stood in her sight confirmed:  she could believe


s: That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized,


s: These two made up of lion, bear and fox,


s: Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,


s: Still by the reckoning infants among men,


s: Had done the deed to strike the Titan host


s: These two combining strength and craft had snared,


s: Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged


s: The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;


s: The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,


s: Great Ares.  And they gagged his trumpet mouth


s: When they had seized on his implacable spear,


s: Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite


s: For he had eyed them nearing him in play,


s: The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,


s: Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount


s: On Earth's original fisticuffs they called


s: For ease of sharp dispute:  whereat the God,


s: Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,


s: Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood


s: The lusty twain were on him and they had him.


s: Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!


s: Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!


s: Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,


s: Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;


s: With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;


s: The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;


s: Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,


s: Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.


s: Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,


s: And tumbled down the cave.  But rather look -


s: Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,


s: Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!


s: Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,


s: Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream,


s: But see her in the Seasons through that year;


s: That one glad year and the fair opening month.


s: Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!


s: War with her, gentle war with her, each day


s: Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,


s: On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength


s: From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,


s: Returned for valiant labour:  she and they


s: By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.


s: Exchange of powers of this conflict came;


s: Defacement none, nor ever squandered force.


s: Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned,


s: As music unto the hand that smote the strings;


s: And she the rosier from their showery brows,


s: They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.


s: Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp


s: Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce


s: The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced


s: Above; those beautiful, those masterful,


s: Those lawless.  High they sit, and if descend,


s: Descend to reap, not sowing.  Is it just?


s: Earth in her happy children asked that word,


s: Whereto within their breast was her reply.


s: Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,


s: Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years;


s: Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired


s: The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust,


s: Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,


s: To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced,


s: And clap lame wings across a wintry haze,


s: Up to the farthest bourne:  immortal still,


s: Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled


s: The Tyranny.  This her voice within them told,


s: When softly the Great Mother chid her sons


s: Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain


s: Set moving by an abject blood, that waked


s: And planted aliens on Olympian heights; -


s: By light from her, born of the love of her,


s: Their lordship the illumined brain rejects


s: For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law,


s: Her other name.  So spake she in their heart,


s: Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath


s: Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,


s: Confidently to cling.  And when brown corn


s: Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,


s: With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss;


s: When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil


s: Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;


s: When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,


s: Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;


s: The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,


s: Then in that time of general cherishment,


s: Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,


s: He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,


s: Then did good Gaea's children gratefully


s: Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace,


s: Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call


s: Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,


s: By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes;


s: The picture of an earth allied to heaven;


s: Between them the known smile behind black masks;


s: Rightly their various moods interpreted;


s: And frolic because toilful children borne


s: With larger comprehension of Earth's aim


s: At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.


s: At times she fluttered, spoke her thought;


s: The posts that named the swallowed mile;


s: To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,


s: Who straightway sound the call to arms.  Thou know'st;


s: And that black spot in each embattled host,


s: Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.


s: Now is it red artillery and white steel;


s: Till on a day will ring the victor's boast,


s: To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,


s: He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe.


s: Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.


s: And struck on sight, when quick with dews,


s: Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal;


s: Who merely danced when light winds blew,


s: With word, that less than feather-weight,


s: The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.


s: Where nought is audible so fills the ear?


s: Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come,


s: She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,


s: Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it.


s: We saw the heavens fling down their rose;


s: Behold than tracks along a startled shore,


s: With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign


s: An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.


s: More closely, warmly:  hither, hither! she,


s: The very she called forth by ripened blood


s: For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,


s: Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she,


s: In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;


s: With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take


s: Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.


s: The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.


s: Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent,


s: The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;


s: In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve,


s: Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell


s: Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.


s: By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen


s: With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen.


s: Her natural snares to make her will supreme.


s: Before the leader foot shall dip in stream:


s: Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way


s: A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,


s: Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.


s: The wooer, and all roseate will she burst:


s: And while commanding blissful sight believe


s: It holds her as a body strained to breast,


s: And bids believe that image, heaving warm,


s: Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;


s: The phantom any breeze blows out of form;


s: The direst blow on human heart she deals:


s: Nought true but what insufferably feels.


s: That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard


s: Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,


s: We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.


s: In her delicious laughter part revealed;


s: Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,


s: For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.


s: Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:


s: Yon folded couples, passing under shade,


s: Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,


s: Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.


s: Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,


s: The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.


s: Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips


s: Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;


s: And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips


s: She nods:  at once that creature wears her lure.


s: Blush of our being between birth and death:


s: Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:


s: Her wily semblance nought of her denies;


s: Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,


s: The generous Goddess yields.  And she can arm


s: Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;


s: Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.


s: But scorn she has for them that walk alone;


s: Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.


s: The men as chief of criminals she disdains,


s: And holds the reason in perceptive thought.


s: More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,


s: Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.


s: Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,


s: In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:


s: Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes


s: For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.


s: Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn


s: A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:


s: Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,


s: The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring


s: Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.


s: Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,


s: In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest;


s: And these because the roses flood their cheeks,


s: Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.


s: With them is war; and well the Goddess knows


s: What undermines the race who mount the rose;


s: How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,


s: Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,


s: The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs,


s: And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.


s: At every point of juncture must be proof;


s: Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge


s: Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge


s: For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.


s: Resisting in her godhead nature's truth.


s: No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;


s: Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.


s: As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.


s: She views her quivering couples unconsoled,


s: Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,


s: Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.


s: Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:


s: Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.


s: And the tongue's pudency confides to her,


s: With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,


s: The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name,


s: Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.


s: As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source


s: Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;


s: Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.


s: And pray they under skies less overcast,


s: That swiftly may her star of eve descend,


s: Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,


s: To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.


s: She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,


s: And him:  the flowers are various, he has choice.


s: Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;


s: Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;


s: And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise


s: Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.


s: She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps


s: To her invoked:  distraction is implored.


s: Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.


s: His tales of her declare she condescends;


s: Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:


s: Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose


s: A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.


s: She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs


s: Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;


s: Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.


s: 'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse


s: And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.


s: Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends


s: Herself to all, and yields herself to none,


s: Save heavenliest:  though claims by men are raised


s: As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout.


s: Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's:  to woo


s: Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.


s: That is her garden's precept, seen where shines


s: Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.


s: Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast


s: Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,


s: In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;


s: High confidence in her whose aid is lent


s: Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.


s: And doth the man pursue a tightened zone,


s: Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.


s: Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe


s: He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.


s: For him requiring woman's arts to please


s: No race of giants!  In the woman's veins


s: Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.


s: Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,


s: In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss;


s: And is it needed that Love's daintier brute


s: Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.


s: In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,


s: She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail,


s: The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,


s: Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power,


s: And greatest and most present, with her dower


s: Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute


s: For meditated guile.  She laughs to hear


s: A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute,


s: Her garden's histories tell of to all near.


s: Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens


s: To push her conquests by the simplest means.


s: While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves


s: From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves.


s: Her spacious garden and her garden's grant


s: She offers in reward for handsome cheer:


s: Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant


s: Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives,


s: From Nature's founts:  she whispers it:  Even I


s: Else little is he lover.  Those he clasps,


s: Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, -


s: Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed.


s: Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,


s: Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned


s: The lover.  Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,


s: He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,


s: Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.


s: From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts


s: A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain


s: Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.


s: Of this he perishes; not she, the throned


s: On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.


s: Earth's chosen Goddess bears:  by none disowned


s: While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,


s: And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;


s: Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry,


s: Till set of man:  the dreamed, the seen;


s: Flushing the world with odorous flowers:


s: Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks,


s: With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;


s: Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress


s: Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,


s: And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,


s: The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.


s: They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;


s: A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.


s: Then was the gracious birth of man's new day;


s: Divided from the haunted night it shone.


s: That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang


s: Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:


s: Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?


s: From the Persuader came it, in those vales


s: Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed


s: Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;


s: Nor either points for us the way of flame.


s: His task to hold them both in breast, and yield


s: Their dues to each, and of their war be field.


s: The foes that in repulsion never ceased,


s: Must he, who once has been the goodly beast


s: Offending neither, nor the natural claim


s: Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name.


s: Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife


s: To hold them fast conjoined within him still;


s: The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.


s: For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;


s: Delicious licence called it Nature's cry;


s: Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;


s: A tread on shingle timed his lame advance


s: On godhead visible, on godhead screened;


s: The radiant roseate, the curtained white;


s: Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.


s: He drank of fictions, till celestial aid


s: Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;


s: To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;


s: The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.


s: Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds,


s: From brotherhood the one way upward leads.


s: But he who claims in spirit to be flower,


s: Will find them both an air that doth devour.


s: Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored


s: External gifts bestowed but on the sword;


s: Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,


s: Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,


s: His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail;


s: Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win


s: While still the conflict tore his breast within.


s: To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.


s: And long with him was wrestling ere emerged


s: Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;


s: Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried,


s: The man's mind opened under weight of cloud.


s: Stood day before a vision shooting wide.


s: The traversed wilderness exposed its track.


s: He felt the far advance in looking back;


s: Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm.