of sin,
     Angel and Wanton! can it be? 
     Her star has foundered in eclipse,
     The shriek of madness on her lips;
     Shreds of her, and no more, we see. 
     There is horrible convulsion, smothered din,
     As of one that in a grave-cloth struggles to be free.

     III

     Look not for spreading boughs
     On the riven forest tree. 
     Look down where deep in blood and mire
     Black thunder plants his feet and ploughs
     The soil for ruin:  that is France: 
     Still thrilling like a lyre,
     Amazed to shivering discord from a fall
     Sudden as that the lurid hosts recall
     Who met in heaven the irreparable mischance. 
     O that is France! 
     The brilliant eyes to kindle bliss,
     The shrewd quick lips to laugh and kiss,
     Breasts that a sighing world inspire,
     And laughter-dimpled countenance
     Where soul and senses caught desire!

     IV

     Ever invoking fire from heaven, the fire
     Has grasped her, unconsumable, but framed
     For all the ecstasies of suffering dire. 
     Mother of Pride, her sanctuary shamed: 
     Mother of Delicacy, and made a mark
     For outrage:  Mother of Luxury, stripped stark: 
     Mother of Heroes, bondsmen:  thro’ the rains,
     Across her boundaries, lo the league-long chains! 
     Fond Mother of her martial youth; they pass,
     Are spectres in her sight, are mown as grass! 
     Mother of Honour, and dishonoured:  Mother
     Of Glory, she condemned to crown with bays
     Her victor, and be fountain of his praise. 
     Is there another curse?  There is another: 
     Compassionate her madness:  is she not
     Mother of Reason? she that sees them mown
     Like grass, her young ones!  Yea, in the low groan
     And under the fixed thunder of this hour
     Which holds the animate world in one foul blot
     Tranced circumambient while relentless Power
     Beaks at her heart and claws her limbs down-thrown,
     She, with the plungeing lightnings overshot,
     With madness for an armour against pain,
     With milkless breasts for little ones athirst,
     And round her all her noblest dying in vain,
     Mother of Reason is she, trebly cursed,
     To feel, to see, to justify the blow;
     Chamber to chamber of her sequent brain
     Gives answer of the cause of her great woe,
     Inexorably echoing thro’ the vaults,
     ’’Tis thus they reap in blood, in blood who sow: 
     ‘This is the sum of self-absolved faults.’ 
     Doubt not that thro’ her grief, with sight supreme,
     Thro’ her delirium and despair’s last dream,
     Thro’ pride, thro’ bright illusion and the brood
     Bewildering of her various Motherhood,
     The high strong light within her, tho’ she bleeds,
     Traces the letters of