Volume Iii Part 17 (1/2)
On her lost arm love bade her look; On her one hand to meditate; The tumult of her blood abate; Disaster face, derision brook: Forbade the page of her Historic Muse, Until her demon his last hold forsook, And smoothly, with no countenance of hate, Her conqueror she could scan to measure. Thence The strange new Winter stream of ruling sense, Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse, Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid; From the top billow of victorious War, Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow; A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade.
She read the things that are; Reality unaccepted read For sign of the distraught, and took her blow To brain; herself read through; Wherefore her predatory Glory paid Napoleon ransom knew.
Her nature's many strings hot gusts did jar Against the note of reason uttered low, Ere pa.s.sionate with duty she might wed, Compel the bride's embrace of her stern groom, Joined at an altar liker to the tomb, Nest of the Furies their first nuptial bed, They not the less were mated and proclaimed The rational their issue. Then she rose.
See how the rush of southern Springtide glows Oceanic in the chariot-wheel's ascent, Illuminated with one breath. The maimed, Tom, tortured, winter-visaged, suddenly Had stature; to the world's wonderment, Fair features, grace of mien, nor least The comic dimples round her April mouth, Sprung of her intimate humanity.
She stood before mankind the very South Rapt out of frost to flowery drapery; Unshadowed save when somewhiles she looked East.
IX
Let but the rational prevail, Our footing is on ground though all else fail: Our kiss of Earth is then a plight To walk within her Laws and have her light.
Choice of the life or death lies in ourselves; There is no fate but when unreason lours.
This Land the cheerful toiler delves, The thinker brightens with fine wit, The lovelier grace as lyric flowers, Those rosed and starred revolving Twelves Shall nurse for effort infinite While leashed to brain the heart of France the Fair Beats tempered music and its lead subserves.
Washed from her eyes the Napoleonic glare, Divinely raised by that in her divine, Not the clear sight of Earth's blunt actual swerves When her lost look, as on a wave of wine, Rolls Eastward, and the mother-flag descries Caress with folds and curves The fortress over Rhine, Beneath the one tall spire.
Despite her brooding thought, her nightlong sighs, Her anguish in desire, She sees, above the brutish paw Alert on her still quivering limb - As little in past time she saw, Nor when dispieced as prey, As victrix when abhorred - A Grand Germania, stout on soil; Audacious up the ethereal dim; The forest's Infant; the strong hand for toil; The patient brain in twilights when astray; Shrewdest of heads to foil and counterfoil; The sceptic and devout; the potent sword; With will and armed to help in hewing way For Europe's march; and of the most golden chord Of the Heliconian lyre Excellent mistress. Yea, she sees, and can admire; Still seeing in what walks the Gallia leads; And with what s.h.i.+eld upon Alsace-Lorraine Her wary sister's doubtful look misreads A mother's throbs for her lost: so loved: so near: Magnetic. Hard the course for her to steer, The leap against the sharpened spikes restrain.
For the belted Overshadower hard the course, On whom devolves the spirit's touchstone, Force: Which is the strenuous arm, to strike inclined, That too much adamantine makes the mind; Forgets it coin of Nature's rich Exchange; Contracts horizons within present sight: Amalekite to-day, across its range Indisputable; to-morrow Simeonite.
X
The mother who gave birth to Jeanne; Who to her young Angelical sprang; Who lay with Earth and heard the notes she sang, And heard her truest sing them; she may reach Heights yet unknown of nations; haply teach A thirsting world to learn 'tis 'she who can.'
She that in History's Heliaea pleads The nation flowering conscience o'er the beast; With heart expurged of rancour, tame of greeds; With the winged mind from fang and claw released; - Will such a land be seen? It will be seen; - Shall stand adjudged our foremost and Earth's Queen.
Acknowledgement that she of G.o.d proceeds The invisible makes visible, as his priest, To her is yielded by a world reclaimed.
And stands she mutilated, fancy-shamed, Yet strong in arms, yet strong in self-control, Known valiant, her maternal throbs repressed, Discarding vengeance, Giant with a soul; - My faith in her when she lay low Was fountain; now as wave at flow Beneath the lights, my faith in G.o.d is best; - On France has come the test Of what she holds within Responsive to Life's deeper springs.
She above the nations blest In fruitful and in liveliest, In all that servant earth to heavenly bidding brings, The devotee of Glory, she may win Glory despoiling none, enrich her kind, Illume her land, and take the royal seat Unto the strong self-conqueror a.s.signed.
But ah, when speaks a loaded breath the double name, Humanity's old Foeman winks agrin.
Her constant Angel eyes her heart's quick beat, The thrill of shadow coursing through her frame.
Like wind among the ranks of amber wheat.
Our Europe, vowed to unity or torn, Observes her face, as shepherds note the morn, And in a ruddy beacon mark an end That for the flock in their grave hearing rings.
Specked overhead the imminent vulture wings At poise, one fatal movement indiscreet, Sprung from the Aetna pa.s.sions' mad revolts, Draws down; the midnight hovers to descend; And dire as Indian noons of ulcer heat Antic.i.p.ating tempest and the bolts, Hangs curtained terrors round her next day's door, Death's emblems for the breast of Europe flings; The breast that waits a spark to fire her store.
Shall, then, the great vitality, France, Signal the backward step once more; Again a G.o.ddess Fortune trace Amid the Deities, and pledge to chance One whom we never could replace?
Now may she tune her nature's many strings To n.o.ble harmony, be seen, be known.
It was the foreign France, the unruly, feared; Little for all her witcheries endeared; Theatrical of arrogance, a sprite With gaseous vapours overblown, In her conceit of power ensphered, Foredoomed to violate and atone; Her the grim conqueror's iron might Avengeing clutched, distrusting rent; Not that sharp intellect with fire endowed To cleave our webs, run lightnings through our cloud; Not virtual France, the France benevolent, The chivalrous, the many-stringed, sublime At intervals, and oft in sweetest chime; Though perilously instrument, A breast for any having G.o.dlike gleam.
This France could no antagonist disesteem, To spurn at heel and confiscate her brood.
Albeit a waverer between heart and mind, And laurels won from sky or plucked from blood, Which wither all the wreath when intertwined, This cherishable France she may redeem.
Beloved of Earth, her heart should feel at length How much unto Earth's offspring it doth owe.
Obstructions are for levelling, have we strength; 'Tis poverty of soul conceived a foe.
Rejected be the wrath that keeps unhealed Her panting wound; to higher Courts appealed The wrongs discerned of higher: Europe waits: She chooses G.o.d or gambles with the Fates.
s.h.i.+nes the new Helen in Alsace-Lorraine, A darker river severs Rhine and Rhone, Is heard a deadlier Epic of the twain; We see a Paris burn Or France Napoleon.
For yet he breathes whom less her heart forswears While trembles its desire to thwart her mind: The Tyrant lives in Victory's return.
What figure with recurrent footstep fares Around those memoried tracks of scarlet mud, To sow her future from an ashen urn By lantern-light, as dragons' teeth are sown?
Of bleeding pride the piercing seer is blind.
But, cleared her eyes of that ensanguined scud Distorting her true features, to be shown Benignly luminous, one who bears Humanity at breast, and she might learn How surely the excelling generous find Renouncement is possession. Sure As light enkindles light when heavenly earthly mates, The flame of pure immits the flame of pure, Magnanimous magnanimous creates.