Now was her face white waves in the tempest's sharp flame-blink;
Her skies shot black.

Now was it visioned infamy to drink
Of earth's cool dew, and through the vines

Frolic in pearly laughter with her young,
Watching the healthful, natural, happy signs

Where hands of lads and maids like tendrils clung,
After their sly shy ventures from the leaf,

And promised bunches. Now it seemed
The world was one malarious mire,

Crying for purification: chief
This land of France. It seemed

A duteous desire
To drink of life's hot flood, and the crimson streamed.

VII
She drank what makes man demon at the draught.

Her skies lowered black,
Her lover flew,

There swept a shudder over men.
Her heavenly lover fled her, and she laughed,

For laughter was her spirit's weapon then.
The Infernal rose uncalled, he with his crew.

VIII
As mighty thews burst manacles, she went mad:

Her heart a flaring torch usurped her wits.
Such enemies of her next-drawn breath she had!

To tread her down in her live grave beneath
Their dancing floor sunned blind by the Royal wreath,

They ringed her steps with crafty prison pits.
Without they girdled her, made nest within.

There ramped the lion, here entrailed the snake.
They forced the cup to her lips when she drank blood;

Believing it, in the mother's mind at strain,
In the mother's fears, and in young Liberty's wail

Alarmed, for her encompassed children's sake,
The sole sure way to save her priceless bud.

Wherewith, when power had gifted her to prevail,
Vengeance appeared as logically akin.

Insanely rational they; she rationally insane;
And in compute of sin, was hers the appealing sin.

IX
Amid the plash of scarlet mud

Stained at the mouth, drunk with our common air,
Not lack of love was her defect;

The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France
Breathing from exultation to despair

At every wild-winged hope struck by mischance
Soaring at each faint gleam o'er her abyss.

Heard still, to be heard while France shall stand erect,
The frontier march she piped her sons, for where

Her crouching outer enemy camped,
Attendant on the deadlier inner's hiss.

She piped her sons the frontier march, the wine
Of martial music, History's cherished tune;

And they, the saintliest labourers that aye
Dropped sweat on soil for bread, took arms and tramped;

High-breasted to match men or elements,
Or Fortune, harsh schoolmistress with the undrilled:

War's ragged pupils; many a wavering line,
Torn from the dear fat soil of champaigns hopefully tilled,

Torn from the motherly bowl, the homely spoon,
To jest at famine, ply

The novel scythe, and stand to it on the field;
Lie in the furrows, rain-clouds for their tents;

Fronting the red artillerystraighten spine;
Buckle the shiver at sight of comrades strewn;

Over an empty platteraffect the merrily filled;
Die, if the multiple hazards around said die;

Downward measure a foeman mightily sized;
Laugh at the legs that would run for a life despised;

Lyrical on into death's red roaring jaw-gape, steeled
Gaily to take of the foe his lesson, and give reply.

Cheerful apprentices, they shall be masters soon!
X

Lo, where hurricane flocks of the North-wind rattle their thunder
Loud through a night, and at dawn comes change to the great South-

west,
Hounds are the hounded in clouds, waves, forests, inverted the race:

Lo, in the day's young beams the colossal invading pursuers
Burst upon rocks and were foam;

Ridged up a torrent crest;
Crumbled to ruin, still gazing a glacial wonder;

Turned shamed feet toe to heel on their track at a panic pace.
Yesterday's clarion cock scudded hen of the invalid comb;

They, the triumphant tonant towering upper, were under;
They, violators of home, dared hope an inviolate home;

They that had stood for the stroke were the vigorous hewers;
Quick as the trick of the wrist with the rapier, they the pursuers.

Heavens and men amazed heard the arrogant crying for grace;
Saw the once hearth-reek rabble the scourge of an army dispieced;

Saw such a shift of the hunt as when Titan Olympus clomb.
Fly! was the sportsman's word; and the note of the quarry rang,

Chase!
XI

Banners from South, from East,
Sheaves of pale banners drooping hole and shred;

The captive brides of valour, Sabine Wives
Plucked from the foeman's blushful bed,

For glorious muted battle-tongues
Of deeds along the horizon's red,

At cost of unreluctant lives;
Her toilful heroes homeward poured,

To give their fevered mother air of the lungs.
She breathed, and in the breathing craved.

Environed as she was, at bay,
Safety she kissed on her drawn sword,

And waved for victory, for fresh victory waved:
She craved for victory as her daily bread;

For victory as her daily banquet raved.
XII

Now had her glut of vengeance left her grey
Of blood, who in her entrails fiercely tore

To clutch and squeeze her snakes; herself the more
Devitalizing: red washer Auroral ray;

Desired if but to paint her pallid hue.
The passion for that young horizon red,

Which dowered her with the flags, the blazing fame,
Like dotage of the past-meridian dame

For some bright Sungod adolescent, swelled
Insatiate, to the voracious grew,

The glutton's inward raveners bred;
Till she, mankind's most dreaded, most abhorred,

Witless in her demands on Fortune, asked,
As by the weaving Fates impelled,

To have the thing most loathed, the iron lord,
Controller and chastiser, under Victory masked.

XIII
Banners from East, from South,

She hugged him in them, feared the scourge they meant,
Yet blindly hugged, and hungering built his throne.

So may you see the village innocent,