The Mother having conscience in arrears;

Ready to gush the flood of vain regret,
Else hearken to her weaponed children's moan

Of stifled rage invoking vengeance: hell's,
If heaven should fail the counter-wave that swells

In blood and brain for retribution swift.
Those helped not: wings to her soul were these who yet

Could welcome day for labour, night for rest,
Enrich her treasury, built of cheerful thrift,

Of honest heart, beyond all miracles;
And likened to Earth's humblest were Earth's best.

IV
Brooding on her deep fall, the many strings

Which formed her nature set a thought on Kings,
As aids that might the low-laid cripple lift;

And one among them hummed devoutly leal,
While passed the sighing breeze along her breast.

Of Kings by the festive vanquishers rammed down
Her gorge since fell the Chief, she knew their crown;

Upon her through long seasons was its grasp,
For neither soul's nor body's weal;

As much bestows the robber wasp,
That in the hanging apple makes a meal,

And carves a face of abscess where was fruit
Ripe ruddy. They would blot

Her radiant leap above the slopes acute,
Of summit to celestial; impute

The wanton's aim to her divinest shot;
Bid her walk History backward over gaps;

Abhor the day of Phrygian caps;
Abjure her guerdon, execrate herself;

The Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Guelph,
Admire repentant; reverently prostrate

Her person unto the belly-god; of whom
Is inward plenty and external bloom;

Enough of pomp and state
And carnival to quench

The breast's desires of an intemperate wench,
The head's ideas beyond legitimate.

She flung them: she was France: nor with far frown
Her lover from the embrace of her refrained:

But in her voice an interwoven wire,
The exultation of her gross renown,

Struck deafness at her heavens, and they waned
Over a look ill-gifted to aspire.

Wherefore, as an abandonment, irate,
The intemperate summoned up her trumpet days,

Her treasure-galleon's wondrous freight.
The cannon-name she sang and shrieked; transferred

Her soul's allegiance; o'er the Tyrant slurred,
Tranced with the zeal of her first fawning gaze,

To clasp his trophy flags and hail him Saint.
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 permanentmiracle 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.
VI

In Nature is no rearward step allowed.
Hard on the rock Reality do we dash

To be shattered, if the material dream propels.
The worship to departed splendour vowed

Conjured a simulacrum, wove her lash,
For the slow measure timed her peal of bells.

Thereof was the cannon-name a mockery round her hills;
For the will of wills,

Its flaccid ape,
Weak as the final echo off a giant's bawl:

Napoleon for disdain,
His banner steeped in crape.

Thereof the barrier of Alsace-Lorraine;
The frozenbillow crested to its fall;

Dismemberment; disfigurement;
Her history blotted; her proud mantle rent;

And ever that one word to reperuse,
With eyes behind a veil of fiery dews;