or a fog
Rolling off sunlight's arrows. Not mightier Phoebus in ire,

Nor deadlier Jove's avengeing right hand, than he of the brain
Keen at an enemy's mind to encircle and pierce and constrain,

Muffling his own for a fate-charged blow very Gods may admire.
Sure to behold are his eagles on high where the conflict raged.

Rightly, then, should France worship, and deafen the disaccord
Of those who dare withstand an irresistible sword

To thwart his predestined subjection of Europe. Let them submit!
She said it aloud, and heard in her breast, as a singer caged,

With the beat of wings at bars, Earth's fluttering little lyre.
No more at midway heaven, but liker midway to the pit:

Not singing the spirally upward of rapture, the downward of pain
Rather, the drop sheer downward from pressure of merciless weight.

Her strangled thought got breath, with her worship held debate;
To yield and sink, yet eye askant the mark she had missed.

Over the black-blue rollers of that broad Westerly main,
Steady to sky, the light of Liberty glowed

In a flamingpillar, that cast on the troubled waters a road
For Europe to cross, and see the thing lost subsist.

For there 'twas a shepherd led his people, no butcher of sheep;
Firmly there the banner he first upreared

Stands to rally; and nourishing grain do his children reap
From a father beloved in life, in his death revered.

Contemplating him and his work, shall a skyward glance
Clearer sight of our dreamed and abandoned obtain;

Nay, but as if seen in station above the Republic, France
Had view of her one-day's heavenly lover again;

Saw him amid the bright host looking down on her; knew she had
erred,

Knew him her judge, knew yonder the spirit preferred;
Yonder the base of the summit she strove that day to ascend,

Ere cannon mastered her soul, and all dreams had end.
VII

Soon felt she in her shivered frame
A bodeful drain of blood illume

Her wits with frosty fire to read
The dazzling wizard who would have her bleed

On fruitless marsh and snows of spectral gloom
For victory that was victoryscarce in name.

Husky his clarions laboured, and her sighs
O'er slaughtered sons were heavier than the prize;

Recalling how he stood by Frederic's tomb,
With Frederic's country underfoot and spurned:

There meditated; till her hope might guess,
Albeit his constant star prescribe success,

The savagestrife would sink, the civil aim
To head a mannered world breathe zephyrous

Of morning after storm; whereunto she yearned;
And Labour's lovely peace, and Beauty's courtly bloom,

The mind in strenuous tasks hilarious.
At such great height, where hero hero topped,

Right sanely should the Grand Ascendant think
No further leaps at the fanged abyss's brink

True Genius takes: be battle's dice-box dropped!
She watched his desert features, hung to hear

The honey words desired, and veiled her face;
Hearing the Seaman's name recur

Wrathfully, thick with a meaning worse
Than call to the march: for that inveterate Purse

Could kindle the extinct, inform a vacant place,
Conjure a heart into the trebly felled.

It squeezed the globe, insufferably swelled
To feed insurgent Europe: rear and van

Were haunted by the amphibious curse;
Here flesh, there phantom, livelier after rout:

The Seaman piping aye to the rightabout,
Distracted Europe's Master, puffed remote

Those Indies of the swift Macedonian,
Whereon would Europe's Master somewhiles doat,

In dreamings on a docile universe
Beneath an immarcessible Charlemagne.

Nor marvel France should veil a seer's face,
And call on darkness as a blest retreat.

Magnanimously could her iron Emperor
Confront submission: hostile stirred to heat

All his vast enginery, allowed no halt
Up withered avenues of waste-blood war,

To the pitiless red mounts of fire afume,
As 'twere the world's arteries opened! Woe the race!

Ask wherefore Fortune's vile caprice should balk
His panther spring across the foaming salt,

From martial sands to the cliffs of pallid chalk!
There is no answer: seed of black defeat

She then did sow, and France nigh unto death foredoom.
See since that Seaman's epicycle sprite

Engirdle, lure and goad him to the chase
Along drear leagues of crimson spotting white

With mother's tears of France, that he may meet
Behind suborned battalions, ranked as wheat

Where peeps the weedy poppy, him of the sea;
Earth's power to baffle Ocean's power resume;

Victorious army crown o'er Victory's fleet;
And bearing low that Seaman upon knee,

Stay the vexed question of supremacy,
Obnoxious in the vault by Frederic's tomb.

VIII
Poured streams of Europe's veins the flood

Full Rhine or Danube rolls off morning-tide
Through shadowed reaches into crimson-dyed:

And Rhine and Danube knew her gush of blood
Down the plucked roots the deepest in her breast.

He tossed her cordials, from his laurels pressed.
She drank for dryness thirstily, praised his gifts.

The blooded frame a powerful draught uplifts
Writhed the devotedness her voice rang wide

In cries ecstatic, as of the martyr-Blest,
Their spirits issuing forth of bodies racked,

And crazy chuckles, with life's tears at feud;
While near her heart the sunken sentinel

Called Critic marked, and dumb in awe reviewed
This torture, this anointed, this untracked

To mortal source, this alien of his kind;
Creator, slayer, conjuror, Solon-Mars,

The cataract of the abyss, the star of stars;
Whose arts to lay the senses under spell

Aroused an insurrectionary mind.
IX

He, did he love her? France was his weapon, shrewd
At edge, a wind in onset: he loved well

His tempered weapon, with the which he hewed
Clean to the ground impediments, or hacked,

Sure of the blade that served the great man-miracle.
He raised her, robed her, gemmed her for his bride,

Did but her blood in blindness given exact.
Her blood she gave, was blind to him as guide:

She quivered at his word, and at his touch
Was hound or steed for any mark he espied.

He loved her more than little, less than much.
The fair subservient of Imperial Fact

Next to his consanguineous was placed
In ranked esteem; above the diurnal meal,

Vexatious carnal appetites above,
Above his hoards, while she Imperial Fact embraced,

And rose but at command from under heel.