Iv

Ever invoking fire from heaven, the fire Has grasped her, unconsumable, but framed For all the ecstasies of suffering dire. Mother of Pride, her sanctuary shamed: Mother of Delicacy, and made a mark For outrage: Mother of Luxury, stripped stark: Mother of Heroes, bondsmen: thro’ the rains, Across her boundaries, lo the league-long chains! Fond Mother of her martial youth; they pass, Are spectres in her sight, are mown as grass! Mother of Honour, and dishonoured: Mother Of Glory, she condemned to crown with bays Her victor, and be fountain of his praise. Is there another curse? There is another: Compassionate her madness: is she not Mother of Reason? she that sees them mown Like grass, her young ones! Yea, in the low groan And under the fixed thunder of this hour Which holds the animate world in one foul blot Tranced circumambient while relentless Power Beaks at her heart and claws her limbs down-thrown, She, with the plungeing lightnings overshot, With madness for an armour against pain, With milkless breasts for little ones athirst, And round her all her noblest dying in vain, Mother of Reason is she, trebly cursed, To feel, to see, to justify the blow; Chamber to chamber of her sequent brain Gives answer of the cause of her great woe, Inexorably echoing thro’ the vaults, ‘’Tis thus they reap in blood, in blood who sow: ‘This is the sum of self-absolvëd faults.’ Doubt not that thro’ her grief, with sight supreme, Thro’ her delirium and despair’s last dream, Thro’ pride, thro’ bright illusion and the brood Bewildering of her various Motherhood, The high strong light within her, tho’ she bleeds, Traces the letters of returned misdeeds. She sees what seed long sown, ripened of late, Bears this fierce crop; and she discerns her fate From origin to agony, and on As far as the wave washes long and wan Off one disastrous impulse: for of waves Our life is, and our deeds are pregnant graves Blown rolling to the sunset from the dawn.