Iv

Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke To husband a resurgent France: From whom, with her dethroning stroke, Dishonour passed; the dalliance, That is occasion’s yea or nay, In issues for the soul to pay, Discarded; and the cleft ’twixt deed and word, The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird, Wherein we see old Darkness peer, Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence; And hence the talons and the beak of prey; Hence all the lures to silken swine Thronging the troughs of indolence; With every sleek convolvement serpentine; The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer, And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay. He clasped in this revived, uprisen France, A valorous dame, of countenance The lightning’s upon cloud: unlit as yet On brows and lips the lurid shine Of seas in the night-wind’s whirl; unstirred Her pouch of the centuries’ injuries compressed; The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard: Earth’s animate full flower she looked, intense For worship, wholly given him, fair Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet, Earth’s crystal spring to sky: Earth’s warrior Best To win Heaven’s Pure up that midway We vision for new ground, where sense And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare, Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray In scorn of the seductive insincere, But martially nude for hot Bellona’s play, And amorous of the loftiest in her view.