her breasts for the young they feed,
     At thought of her single hand, and the lost so nigh. 
     Mother love for her own, who raised her when she lay sick
     Nigh death, and would in like fountains fruitlessly bleed,
     Withholds the fling of her heart on the further die.

     Of love is wisdom.  Is it great love, then wise
     Will our wild heart be, though whipped unto madness more
     By its mentor’s counselling voice than thoughtfully reined. 
     Desire of the wave for the shore,
     Passion for one last agony under skies,
     To make her heavens remorseful, she restrained

     VIII

     On her lost arm love bade her look;
     On her one hand to meditate;
     The tumult of her blood abate;
     Disaster face, derision brook: 
     Forbade the page of her Historic Muse,
     Until her demon his last hold forsook,
     And smoothly, with no countenance of hate,
     Her conqueror she could scan to measure.  Thence
     The strange new Winter stream of ruling sense,
     Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse,
     Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid;
     From the top billow of victorious War,
     Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow;
     A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade. 
     She read the things that are;
     Reality unaccepted read
     For sign of the distraught, and took her blow
     To brain; herself read through;
     Wherefore her predatory Glory paid
     Napoleon ransom knew. 
     Her nature’s many strings hot gusts did jar
     Against the note of reason uttered low,
     Ere passionate with duty she might wed,
     Compel the bride’s embrace of her stern groom,
     Joined at an altar liker to the tomb,
     Nest of the Furies their first nuptial bed,
     They not the less were mated and proclaimed
     The rational their issue.  Then she rose.

     See how the rush of southern Springtide glows
     Oceanic in the chariot-wheel’s ascent,
     Illuminated with one breath.  The maimed,
     Tom, tortured, winter-visaged, suddenly
     Had stature; to the world’s wonderment,
     Fair features, grace of mien, nor least
     The comic dimples round her April mouth,
     Sprung of her intimate humanity. 
     She stood before mankind the very South
     Rapt out of frost to flowery drapery;
     Unshadowed save when somewhiles she looked East.

     IX

     Let but the rational prevail,
     Our footing is on ground though all else fail: 
     Our kiss of Earth is then a plight
     To walk within her Laws and have her light. 
     Choice of the life or death lies in ourselves;
     There is no fate but when unreason lours. 
     This Land the cheerful toiler delves,
     The thinker brightens with fine wit,