returned misdeeds. 
     She sees what seed long sown, ripened of late,
     Bears this fierce crop; and she discerns her fate
     From origin to agony, and on
     As far as the wave washes long and wan
     Off one disastrous impulse:  for of waves
     Our life is, and our deeds are pregnant graves
     Blown rolling to the sunset from the dawn.

     V

     Ah, what a dawn of splendour, when her sowers
     Went forth and bent the necks of populations
     And of their terrors and humiliations
     Wove her the starry wreath that earthward lowers
     Now in the figure of a burning yoke! 
     Her legions traversed North and South and East,
     Of triumph they enjoyed the glutton’s feast: 
     They grafted the green sprig, they lopped the oak. 
     They caught by the beard the tempests, by the scalp
     The icy precipices, and clove sheer through
     The heart of horror of the pinnacled Alp,
     Emerging not as men whom mortals knew. 
     They were the earthquake and the hurricane,
     The lightnings and the locusts, plagues of blight,
     Plagues of the revel:  they were Deluge rain,
     And dreaded Conflagration; lawless Might. 
     Death writes a reeling line along the snows,
     Where under frozen mists they may be tracked,
     Who men and elements provoked to foes,
     And Gods:  they were of god and beast compact: 
     Abhorred of all.  Yet, how they sucked the teats
     Of Carnage, thirsty issue of their dam,
     Whose eagles, angrier than their oriflamme,
     Flushed the vext earth with blood, green earth forgets. 
     The gay young generations mask her grief;
     Where bled her children hangs the loaded sheaf. 
     Forgetful is green earth; the Gods alone
     Remember everlastingly:  they strike
     Remorselessly, and ever like for like. 
     By their great memories the Gods are known.

     VI

     They are with her now, and in her ears, and known. 
     ’Tis they that cast her to the dust for Strength,
     Their slave, to feed on her fair body’s length,
     That once the sweetest and the proudest shone;
     Scoring for hideous dismemberment
     Her limbs, as were the anguish-taking breath
     Gone out of her in the insufferable descent
     From her high chieftainship; as were she death,
     Who hears a voice of justice, feels the knife
     Of torture, drinks all ignominy of life. 
     They are with her, and the painful Gods might weep,
     If ever rain of tears came out of heaven
     To flatter Weakness and bid conscience sleep,
     Viewing the woe of this Immortal, driven
     For the soul’s life to drain the maddening cup
     Of her own children’s blood implacably: 
     Unsparing even as they to furrow up
     The yellow land to likeness of a sea: