Reflected bright in permanence:  she bled
     As the Bacchante spills her challengeing wine
     With whirl o’ the cup before the kiss to lip;
     And bade drudge History in his footprints tread,
     For pride of sword-strokes o’er slow penmanship: 
     Each step of his a volume:  his sharp word
     The shower of steel and lead
     Or pastoral sunshine.

     V

     Persistent through the brazen chorus round
     His thunderous footsteps on the foeman’s ground,
     A broken carol of wild notes was heard,
     As when an ailing infant wails a dream. 
     Strange in familiarity it rang: 
     And now along the dark blue vault might seem
     Winged migratories having but heaven for home,
     Now the lone sea-bird’s cry down shocks of foam,
     Beneath a ruthless paw the captive’s pang.

     It sang the gift that comes from God
     To mind of man as air to lung. 
     So through her days of under sod
     Her faith unto her heart had sung,
     Like bedded seed by frozen clod,
     With view of wide-armed heaven and buds at burst,
     And midway up, Earth’s fluttering little lyre. 
     Even for a glimpse, for even a hope in chained desire
     The vision of it watered thirst.

     VI

     But whom those errant moans accused
     As Liberty’s murderous mother, cried accursed,
     France blew to deafness:  for a space she mused;
     She smoothed a startled look, and sought,
     From treasuries of the adoring slave,
     Her surest way to strangle thought;
     Picturing her dread lord decree advance
     Into the enemy’s land; artillery, bayonet, lance;
     His ordering fingers point the dial’s to time their ranks: 
     Himself the black storm-cloud, the tempest’s bayonet-glaive. 
     Like foam-heads of a loosened freshet bursting banks,
     By mount and fort they thread to swamp the sluggard plains. 
     Shines his gold-laurel sun, or cloak connivent rains. 
     They press to where the hosts in line and square throng mute;
     He watchful of their form, the Audacious, the Astute;
     Eagle to grip the field; to work his craftiest, fox. 
     From his brief signal, straight the stroke of the leveller falls;
     From him those opal puffs, those arcs with the clouded balls: 
     He waves and the voluble scene is a quagmire shifting blocks;
     They clash, they are knotted, and now ’tis the deed of the axe on
     the log;
     Here away moves a spiky woodland, and yon away sweep
     Rivers of horse torrent-mad to the shock, and the heap over heap
     Right through the troughed black lines turned to bunches or shreds,
     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