Volume Iii Part 13 (1/2)

Unequalled since the world was man they pour A spiky girdle round her; these, her sons, His cataracts at smooth holiday, soon to roar Obstruction shattered at his will or whim: Kind to her ear as quiring Cherubim, And trampling earth like scornful mastodons.

IV

The flood that swept her to be slave Adoring, under thought of being his mate, These were, and unto the visibly unexcelled, As much of heart as abjects can she gave, Or what of heart the body bears for freight When Majesty apparent overawes; By the flash of his ascending deeds upheld, Which let not feminine pride in him have pause To question where the n.o.bler pride rebelled.

She read the hieroglyphic on his brow, Felt his firm hand to wield the giant's mace; Herself whirled upward in an eagle's claws, Past recollection of her earthly place; And if cold Reason pressed her, called him Fate; Offering abashed the servile woman's vow.

Delirium was her virtue when the look At fettered wrists and violated laws Faith in a rect.i.tude Supernal shook, Till wors.h.i.+p of him shone as her last rational state, The slave's apology for gemmed disgrace.

Far in her mind that leap from earth to the ghost Midway on high; or felt as a troubled pool; Or as a broken sleep that hunts a dream half lost, Arrested and rebuked by the common school Of daily things for truancy. She could rejoice To know with wakeful eyeb.a.l.l.s Violence Her crowned possessor, and, on every sense Inc.u.mbent, Fact, Imperial Fact, her choice, In scorn of barren visions, aims at a gla.s.sy void.

Who sprang for Liberty once, found slavery sweet; And Tyranny, on alert subservience buoyed, Spurred a blood-mare immeasureably fleet To shoot the transient leagues in a pa.s.sing wink, Prompt for the glorious bound at the fanged abyss's brink.

Scarce felt she that she bled when battle scored On riddled flags the further conjured line; From off the meteor gleam of his waved sword Reflected bright in permanence: she bled As the Bacchante spills her challengeing wine With whirl o' the cup before the kiss to lip; And bade drudge History in his footprints tread, For pride of sword-strokes o'er slow penmans.h.i.+p: Each step of his a volume: his sharp word The shower of steel and lead Or pastoral suns.h.i.+ne.

V

Persistent through the brazen chorus round His thunderous footsteps on the foeman's ground, A broken carol of wild notes was heard, As when an ailing infant wails a dream.

Strange in familiarity it rang: And now along the dark blue vault might seem Winged migratories having but heaven for home, Now the lone sea-bird's cry down shocks of foam, Beneath a ruthless paw the captive's pang.

It sang the gift that comes from G.o.d To mind of man as air to lung.

So through her days of under sod Her faith unto her heart had sung, Like bedded seed by frozen clod, With view of wide-armed heaven and buds at burst, And midway up, Earth's fluttering little lyre.

Even for a glimpse, for even a hope in chained desire The vision of it watered thirst.

VI

But whom those errant moans accused As Liberty's murderous mother, cried accursed, France blew to deafness: for a s.p.a.ce she mused; She smoothed a startled look, and sought, From treasuries of the adoring slave, Her surest way to strangle thought; Picturing her dread lord decree advance Into the enemy's land; artillery, bayonet, lance; His ordering fingers point the dial's to time their ranks: Himself the black storm-cloud, the tempest's bayonet-glaive.

Like foam-heads of a loosened freshet bursting banks, By mount and fort they thread to swamp the sluggard plains.

s.h.i.+nes his gold-laurel sun, or cloak connivent rains.

They press to where the hosts in line and square throng mute; He watchful of their form, the Audacious, the Astute; Eagle to grip the field; to work his craftiest, fox.

From his brief signal, straight the stroke of the leveller falls; From him those opal puffs, those arcs with the clouded b.a.l.l.s: He waves and the voluble scene is a quagmire s.h.i.+fting blocks; They clash, they are knotted, and now 'tis the deed of the axe on the log; Here away moves a spiky woodland, and yon away sweep Rivers of horse torrent-mad to the shock, and the heap over heap Right through the troughed black lines turned to bunches or shreds, or a fog Rolling off sunlight's arrows. Not mightier Phoebus in ire, Nor deadlier Jove's avengeing right hand, than he of the brain Keen at an enemy's mind to encircle and pierce and constrain, m.u.f.fling his own for a fate-charged blow very G.o.ds may admire.

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

Rightly, then, should France wors.h.i.+p, and deafen the disaccord Of those who dare withstand an irresistible sword To thwart his predestined subjection of Europe. Let them submit!

She said it aloud, and heard in her breast, as a singer caged, With the beat of wings at bars, Earth's fluttering little lyre.

No more at midway heaven, but liker midway to the pit: Not singing the spirally upward of rapture, the downward of pain Rather, the drop sheer downward from pressure of merciless weight.

Her strangled thought got breath, with her wors.h.i.+p held debate; To yield and sink, yet eye askant the mark she had missed.

Over the black-blue rollers of that broad Westerly main, Steady to sky, the light of Liberty glowed In a flaming pillar, that cast on the troubled waters a road For Europe to cross, and see the thing lost subsist.

For there 'twas a shepherd led his people, no butcher of sheep; Firmly there the banner he first upreared Stands to rally; and nouris.h.i.+ng grain do his children reap From a father beloved in life, in his death revered.

Contemplating him and his work, shall a skyward glance Clearer sight of our dreamed and abandoned obtain; Nay, but as if seen in station above the Republic, France Had view of her one-day's heavenly lover again; Saw him amid the bright host looking down on her; knew she had erred, Knew him her judge, knew yonder the spirit preferred; Yonder the base of the summit she strove that day to ascend, Ere cannon mastered her soul, and all dreams had end.

VII

Soon felt she in her s.h.i.+vered frame A bodeful drain of blood illume Her wits with frosty fire to read The dazzling wizard who would have her bleed On fruitless marsh and snows of spectral gloom For victory that was victory scarce in name.

Husky his clarions laboured, and her sighs O'er slaughtered sons were heavier than the prize; Recalling how he stood by Frederic's tomb, With Frederic's country underfoot and spurned: There meditated; till her hope might guess, Albeit his constant star prescribe success, The savage strife would sink, the civil aim To head a mannered world breathe zephyrous Of morning after storm; whereunto she yearned; And Labour's lovely peace, and Beauty's courtly bloom, The mind in strenuous tasks hilarious.

At such great height, where hero hero topped, Right sanely should the Grand Ascendant think No further leaps at the fanged abyss's brink True Genius takes: be battle's dice-box dropped!

She watched his desert features, hung to hear The honey words desired, and veiled her face; Hearing the Seaman's name recur Wrathfully, thick with a meaning worse Than call to the march: for that inveterate Purse Could kindle the extinct, inform a vacant place, Conjure a heart into the trebly felled.

It squeezed the globe, insufferably swelled To feed insurgent Europe: rear and van Were haunted by the amphibious curse; Here flesh, there phantom, livelier after rout: The Seaman piping aye to the rightabout, Distracted Europe's Master, puffed remote Those Indies of the swift Macedonian, Whereon would Europe's Master somewhiles doat, In dreamings on a docile universe Beneath an immarcessible Charlemagne.

Nor marvel France should veil a seer's face, And call on darkness as a blest retreat.

Magnanimously could her iron Emperor Confront submission: hostile stirred to heat All his vast enginery, allowed no halt Up withered avenues of waste-blood war, To the pitiless red mounts of fire afume, As 'twere the world's arteries opened! Woe the race!

Ask wherefore Fortune's vile caprice should balk His panther spring across the foaming salt, From martial sands to the cliffs of pallid chalk!

There is no answer: seed of black defeat She then did sow, and France nigh unto death foredoom.

See since that Seaman's epicycle sprite Engirdle, lure and goad him to the chase Along drear leagues of crimson spotting white With mother's tears of France, that he may meet Behind suborned battalions, ranked as wheat Where peeps the weedy poppy, him of the sea; Earth's power to baffle Ocean's power resume; Victorious army crown o'er Victory's fleet; And bearing low that Seaman upon knee, Stay the vexed question of supremacy, Obnoxious in the vault by Frederic's tomb.

VIII

Poured streams of Europe's veins the flood Full Rhine or Danube rolls off morning-tide Through shadowed reaches into crimson-dyed: And Rhine and Danube knew her gush of blood Down the plucked roots the deepest in her breast.

He tossed her cordials, from his laurels pressed.