Volume Iii Part 14 (2/2)
And him, her yoke-fellow, her black lord, her fate, In doubt, in fevered hope, in chills of hate, That tore her old credulity to strips, Then pressed the auspicious relics on her lips, His withered slave for foregone miracles urged.
And he, whom now his ominous halo's round, A three parts blank decrescent sickle, crowned, Prodigious in catastrophe, could wear The realm of Darkness with its Prince's air; a.s.sume in mien the resolute pretence To satiate an hungered confidence, Proved criminal by the sceptic seen to cower Beside the generous face of that frail flower.
XIII
Desire and terror then had each of each: His crown and sword were staked on the magic stroke; Her blood she gave as one who loved her leech; And both did barter under union's cloak.
An union in hot fever and fierce need Of either's aid, distrust in trust did breed.
Their traffic instincts hooded their live wits To issues. Never human fortune throve On such alliance. Viewed by fits, From Vulcan's forge a hovering Jove Evolved. The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove.
Her awe of him his dread of her invoked: His nature with her s.h.i.+vering faith ran yoked.
What wisdom counselled, Policy declined; All perils dared he save the step behind.
Ahead his grand initiative becked: One spark of radiance blurred, his...o...b..was wrecked.
Stripped to the despot upstart, for success He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness.
He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught, While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught He held in hand, while losing it; pressed advance, p.r.i.c.ked for her lees the veins of wasted France; Who, had he stayed to husband her, had spun The strength he taxed unripened for his throw, In vengeful casts calamitous, On fields where palsying Pyrrhic laurels grow, The luminous the ruinous.
An incalescent scorpion, And fierier for the mounded cirque That narrowed at him thick and murk, This gambler with his genius Flung lives in angry volleys, b.l.o.o.d.y lightnings, flung His fortunes to the hosts he stung, With victories clipped his eagle's wings.
By the hands that built him up was he undone: By the star aloft, which was his ram's-head will Within; by the toppling throne the soldier won; By the yeasty ferment of what once had been, To cloud a rational mind for present things; By his own force, the suicide in his mill.
Needs never G.o.d of Vengeance intervene When giants their last lesson have to learn.
Fighting against an end he could discern, The chivalry whereof he had none He called from his worn slave's abundant springs: Not deigning spousally entreat That ever blinded by his martial skill, But harsh to have her wors.h.i.+p counted out In human coin, her vital rivers drained, Her infant forests felled, commanded die The decade thousand deaths for his Imperial seat, Where throning he her faith in him maintained; Bound Reason to believe delayed defeat Was triumph; and what strength in her remained To head against the ultimate foreseen rout, Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will, Servant and sycophant: without ally, In Python's coils, the Master Craftsman still; The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly, The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout, The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers, Striking from black disaster starry showers.
Her supreme player of man's primaeval game, He won his harnessed victim's rapturous shout, When every move was mortal to her frame, Her prayer to life that stricken he might lie, She to exchange his laurels for earth's flowers.
The innumerable whelmed him, and he fell: A vessel in mid-ocean under storm.
Ere ceased the lullaby of his pa.s.sing bell, He sprang to sight, in human form Revealed, from no celestial aids: The shades enclosed him, and he fired the shades.
Cannon his name, Cannon his voice, he came.
The fount of miracles from drought-dust arose, Amazing even on his Imperial stage, Where marvels lightened through the alternate hours And winged o'er human earth's heroical shone.
Into the press of c.u.mulative foes, Across the friendly fields of smoke and rage, A broken structure bore his furious powers; The man no more, the Warrior Chief the same; Match for all rivals; in himself but flame Of an outworn lamp, to illumine nought anon.
Yet loud as when he first showed War's effete Their Schoolman off his eagre mounted high, And summoned to subject who dared compete, The cannon in the name Napoleon Discoursed of sulphur earth to curtained sky.
So through a tropic day a regnant sun, Where armies of a.s.sailant vapours thronged, His glory's trappings laid on them: comes night, Enwraps him in a bosom quick of heat From his anterior splendours, and shall seem Day instant, Day's own lord in the furnace gleam, The virulent quiver on ravished eyes prolonged, When severed darkness, all flaminical bright, Slips vivid eagles linked in rapid flight; Which bring at whiles the lionly far roar, As wrestled he with manacles and gags, To speed across a cowering world once more, Superb in ordered floods, his lordly flags.
His name on silence thundered, on the obscure Lightened; it haunted morn and even-song: Earth of her prodigy's extinction long, With shudderings and with thrillings, hung unsure.
Snapped was the chord that made the resonant bow, In France, abased and like a shrunken corse; Amid the weakest weak, the lowest low, From the highest fallen, stagnant off her source; Condemned to hear the nations' hostile mirth; See curtained heavens, and smell a sulphurous earth; Which told how evermore shall tyrant Force Beget the greater for its overthrow.
The song of Liberty in her hearing spoke A foreign tongue; Earth's fluttering little lyre Unlike, but like the raven's ravening croak.
Not till her breath of being could aspire Anew, this loved and scourged of Angels found Our common brotherhood in sight and sound: When mellow rang the name Napoleon, And dim aloft her young Angelical waved.
Between ethereal and gross to choose, She swung; her soul desired, her senses craved.
They p.r.i.c.ked her dreams, while oft her skies were dun Behind o'ershadowing foemen: on a tide They drew the nature having need of pride Among her fellows for its vital dues: He seen like some rare treasure-galleon, Hull down, with masts against the Western hues.
FRANCE--DECEMBER 1870
I
We look for her that sunlike stood Upon the forehead of our day, An orb of nations, radiating food For body and for mind alway.
Where is the Shape of glad array; The nervous hands, the front of steel, The clarion tongue? Where is the bold proud face?
We see a vacant place; We hear an iron heel.
II
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