Was it a necromancer lured
     To weave his tense betraying spell? 
     A Titan whom our God endured
     Till he of his foul hungers fell,
     By all his craft and labour scourged? 
     A deluge Europe’s liberated wave,
     Paean to sky, leapt over that vast grave. 
     Its shadow-points against her sacred land converged. 
     And him, her yoke-fellow, her black lord, her fate,
     In doubt, in fevered hope, in chills of hate,
     That tore her old credulity to strips,
     Then pressed the auspicious relics on her lips,
     His withered slave for foregone miracles urged. 
     And he, whom now his ominous halo’s round,
     A three parts blank decrescent sickle, crowned,
     Prodigious in catastrophe, could wear
     The realm of Darkness with its Prince’s air;
     Assume in mien the resolute pretence
     To satiate an hungered confidence,
     Proved criminal by the sceptic seen to cower
     Beside the generous face of that frail flower.

     XIII

     Desire and terror then had each of each: 
     His crown and sword were staked on the magic stroke;
     Her blood she gave as one who loved her leech;
     And both did barter under union’s cloak. 
     An union in hot fever and fierce need
     Of either’s aid, distrust in trust did breed. 
     Their traffic instincts hooded their live wits
     To issues.  Never human fortune throve
     On such alliance.  Viewed by fits,
     From Vulcan’s forge a hovering Jove
     Evolved.  The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove. 
     Her awe of him his dread of her invoked: 
     His nature with her shivering faith ran yoked. 
     What wisdom counselled, Policy declined;
     All perils dared he save the step behind. 
     Ahead his grand initiative becked: 
     One spark of radiance blurred, his orb was wrecked. 
     Stripped to the despot upstart, for success
     He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness. 
     He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught,
     While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught
     He held in hand, while losing it; pressed advance,
     Pricked for her lees the veins of wasted France;
     Who, had he stayed to husband her, had spun
     The strength he taxed unripened for his throw,
     In vengeful casts calamitous,
     On fields where palsying Pyrrhic laurels grow,
     The luminous the ruinous. 
     An incalescent scorpion,
     And fierier for the mounded cirque
     That narrowed at him thick and murk,
     This gambler with his genius
     Flung lives in angry volleys, bloody lightnings, flung
     His fortunes to the hosts he stung,
     With victories clipped his eagle’s wings. 
     By the hands that built him up was he undone: 
     By the star aloft, which was his ram’s-head will