and shall seem
     Day instant, Day’s own lord in the furnace gleam,
     The virulent quiver on ravished eyes prolonged,
     When severed darkness, all flaminical bright,
     Slips vivid eagles linked in rapid flight;
     Which bring at whiles the lionly far roar,
     As wrestled he with manacles and gags,
     To speed across a cowering world once more,
     Superb in ordered floods, his lordly flags. 
     His name on silence thundered, on the obscure
     Lightened; it haunted morn and even-song: 
     Earth of her prodigy’s extinction long,
     With shudderings and with thrillings, hung unsure.

     Snapped was the chord that made the resonant bow,
     In France, abased and like a shrunken corse;
     Amid the weakest weak, the lowest low,
     From the highest fallen, stagnant off her source;
     Condemned to hear the nations’ hostile mirth;
     See curtained heavens, and smell a sulphurous earth;
     Which told how evermore shall tyrant Force
     Beget the greater for its overthrow. 
     The song of Liberty in her hearing spoke
     A foreign tongue; Earth’s fluttering little lyre
     Unlike, but like the raven’s ravening croak. 
     Not till her breath of being could aspire
     Anew, this loved and scourged of Angels found
     Our common brotherhood in sight and sound: 
     When mellow rang the name Napoleon,
     And dim aloft her young Angelical waved. 
     Between ethereal and gross to choose,
     She swung; her soul desired, her senses craved. 
     They pricked her dreams, while oft her skies were dun
     Behind o’ershadowing foemen:  on a tide
     They drew the nature having need of pride
     Among her fellows for its vital dues: 
     He seen like some rare treasure-galleon,
     Hull down, with masts against the Western hues.

     France—­December1870

     I

     We look for her that sunlike stood
     Upon the forehead of our day,
     An orb of nations, radiating food
     For body and for mind alway. 
     Where is the Shape of glad array;
     The nervous hands, the front of steel,
     The clarion tongue?  Where is the bold proud face? 
     We see a vacant place;
     We hear an iron heel.

     II

     O she that made the brave appeal
     For manhood when our time was dark,
     And from our fetters drove the spark
     Which was as lightning to reveal
     New seasons, with the swifter play
     Of pulses, and benigner day;
     She that divinely shook the dead
     From living man; that stretched ahead
     Her resolute forefinger straight,
     And marched toward the gloomy gate
     Of earth’s Untried, gave note, and in
     The good name of Humanity
     Called forth the daring vision! she,
     She likewise half corrupt