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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 God 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 God 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 assigned. 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 passions’ mad revolts, Draws down; the midnight hovers to descend; And dire as Indian noons of ulcer heat Anticipating 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 Goddess 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 noble 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 godlike 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 God or gambles with the Fates. Shines 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 seër 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. So to majestic beauty stricken rears Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow; And men are in the secret with the spheres, Whose glory is celestially to bestow.

Now nation looks to nation, that may live Their common nurseling, like the torrent’s flower, Shaken by foul Destruction’s fast-piled heap. On France is laid the proud initiative Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour, Whereby more than her lost one will she reap; Perchance the very lost regain, To count it less than her superb reward. Our Europe, where is debtor each to each, Pass measure of excess, and war is Cain, Fraternal from the Seaman’s beach, From answering Rhine in grand accord, From Neva beneath Northern cloud, And from our Transatlantic Europe loud, Will hail the rare example for their theme; Give response, as rich foliage to the breeze; In their entrusted nurseling know them one: Like a brave vessel under press of steam, Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas, Plucked by the heavens forlorn of present sun, Will drive through darkness, and, with faith supreme, Have sight of haven and the crowded quays.

THE CAGEING OF ARES ILIAD, v. 385