V

She hailed him Saint: And her Jeanne unsainted, foully sung! The virgin who conceived a France when funeral glooms Across a land aquake with sharp disseverance hung: Conceived, and under stress of battle brought her forth; Crowned her in purification of feud and foeman’s taint; Taught her to feel her blood her being, know her worth, Have joy of unity: the Jeanne bescreeched, bescoffed, Who flamed to ashes, flew up wreaths of faggot fumes; Through centuries a star in vapour-folds aloft.

For her people to hail her Saint, Were no lifting of her, Earth’s gem, Earth’s chosen, Earth’s throb on divine: In the ranks of the starred she is one, While man has thought on our line: No lifting of her, but for them, Breath of the mountain, beam of the sun Through mist, out of swamp-fires’ lures release, Youth on the forehead, the rough right way Seen to be footed: for them the heart’s peace, By the mind’s war won for a permanent miracle day.

Her arms below her sword-hilt crossed, The heart of that high-hallowed Jeanne Into the furnace-pit she tossed Before her body knew the flame, And sucked its essence: warmth for righteous work, An undivided power to speed her aim. She had no self but France: the sainted man No France but self. Him warrior and clerk, Free of his iron clutch; and him her young, In whirled imagination mastodonized; And him her penmen, him her poets; all For the visioned treasure-galleon astrain; Sent zenithward on bass and treble tongue, Till solely through his glory France was prized. She who had her Jeanne; The child of her industrious; Earth’s truest, earth’s pure fount from the main; And she who had her one day’s mate, In the soul’s view illustrious Past blazonry, her Immaculate, Those hours of slavish Empire would recall; Thrill to the rattling anchor-chain She heard upon a day in ‘I who can’; Start to the softened, tremulous bugle-blare Of that Caesarean Italian Across the storied fields of trampled grain, As to a Vercingetorix of old Gaul Blowing the rally against a Caesar’s reign. Her soul’s protesting sobs she drowned to swear Fidelity unto the sainted man, Whose nimbus was her crown; and be again The foreigner in Europe, known of none, None knowing; sight to dazzle, voice to stun. Rearward she stepped, with thirst for Europe’s van; The dream she nursed a snare, The flag she bore a pall.