Lopped of an arm, mother love for her own springs quick,
To curdle the milk in her breasts for the young they feed,
At thought of her single hand, and the lost so nigh.
Mother love for her own, who raised her when she lay sick
Nigh death, and would in like
fountains fruitlessly bleed,
Withholds the fling of her heart on the further die.
Of love is
wisdom. Is it great love, then wise
Will our wild heart be, though whipped unto
madness more
By its mentor's counselling voice than
thoughtfully reined.
Desire of the wave for the shore,
Passion for one last agony under skies,
To make her heavens remorseful, she restrained
VIII
On her lost arm love bade her look;
On her one hand to meditate;
The
tumult of her blood abate;
Disaster face,
derision brook:
Forbade the page of her Historic Muse,
Until her demon his last hold forsook,
And
smoothly, with no
countenance of hate,
Her
conqueror she could scan to
measure. Thence
The strange new Winter
stream of ruling sense,
Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse,
Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid;
From the top
billow of
victorious War,
Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow;
A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade.
She read the things that are;
Reality unaccepted read
For sign of the distraught, and took her blow
To brain; herself read through;
Wherefore her predatory Glory paid
Napoleon
ransom knew.
Her nature's many strings hot gusts did jar
Against the note of reason uttered low,
Ere
passionate with duty she might wed,
Compel the bride's
embrace of her stern groom,
Joined at an altar liker to the tomb,
Nest of the Furies their first
nuptial bed,
They not the less were mated and proclaimed
The
rational their issue. Then she rose.
See how the rush of southern Springtide glows
Oceanic in the chariot-wheel's ascent,
Illuminated with one
breath. The maimed,
Tom, tortured, winter-visaged, suddenly
Had
stature; to the world's wonderment,
Fair features, grace of mien, nor least
The comic dimples round her April mouth,
Sprung of her
intimate humanity.
She stood before mankind the very South
Rapt out of frost to
flowery drapery;
Unshadowed save when somewhiles she looked East.
IX
Let but the
rational prevail,
Our
footing is on ground though all else fail:
Our kiss of Earth is then a plight
To walk within her Laws and have her light.
Choice of the life or death lies in ourselves;
There is no fate but when unreason lours.
This Land the
cheerful toiler delves,
The thinker brightens with fine wit,
The lovelier grace as lyric flowers,
Those rosed and starred revolving Twelves
Shall nurse for effort infinite
While leashed to brain the heart of France the Fair
Beats tempered music and its lead subserves.
Washed from her eyes the Napoleonic glare,
Divinely raised by that in her divine,
Not the clear sight of Earth's blunt
actual swerves
When her lost look, as on a wave of wine,
Rolls Eastward, and the mother-flag descries
Caress with folds and curves
The
fortress over Rhine,
Beneath the one tall spire.
Despite her brooding thought, her nightlong sighs,
Her
anguish in desire,
She sees, above the brutish paw
Alert on her still quivering limb -
As little in past time she saw,
Nor when dispieced as prey,
As victrix when abhorred -
A Grand Germania, stout on soil;
Audacious up the
ethereal dim;
The forest's Infant; the strong hand for toil;
The patient brain in twilights when astray;
Shrewdest of heads to foil and counterfoil;
The sceptic and
devout; the
potent sword;
With will and armed to help in hewing way
For Europe's march; and of the most golden chord
Of the Heliconian lyre
Excellent
mistress. Yea, she sees, and can admire;
Still
seeing in what walks the Gallia leads;
And with what
shield upon Alsace-Lorraine
Her wary sister's
doubtful look misreads
A mother's throbs for her lost: so loved: so near:
Magnetic. Hard the course for her to steer,
The leap against the sharpened spikes restrain.
For the belted Overshadower hard the course,
On whom devolves the spirit's touchstone, Force:
Which is the
strenuous arm, to strike inclined,
That too much adamantine makes the mind;
Forgets it coin of Nature's rich Exchange;
Contracts horizons within present sight:
Amalekite to-day, across its range
Indisputable; to-morrow Simeonite.
X
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
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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