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 flaming pillar, 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 victory scarce 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 savage strife 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!