fancy-shamed,
     Yet strong in arms, yet strong in self-control,
     Known valiant, her maternal throbs repressed,
     Discarding vengeance, Giant with a soul; —
     My faith in her when she lay low
     Was fountain; now as wave at flow
     Beneath the lights, my faith in God is best; —
     On France has come the test
     Of what she holds within
     Responsive to Life’s deeper springs. 
     She above the nations blest
     In fruitful and in liveliest,
     In all that servant earth to heavenly bidding brings,
     The devotee of Glory, she may win
     Glory despoiling none, enrich her kind,
     Illume her land, and take the royal seat
     Unto the strong self-conqueror assigned. 
     But ah, when speaks a loaded breath the double name,
     Humanity’s old Foeman winks agrin. 
     Her constant Angel eyes her heart’s quick beat,
     The thrill of shadow coursing through her frame. 
     Like wind among the ranks of amber wheat. 
     Our Europe, vowed to unity or torn,
     Observes her face, as shepherds note the morn,
     And in a ruddy beacon mark an end
     That for the flock in their grave hearing rings. 
     Specked overhead the imminent vulture wings
     At poise, one fatal movement indiscreet,
     Sprung from the Aetna passions’ mad revolts,
     Draws down; the midnight hovers to descend;
     And dire as Indian noons of ulcer heat
     Anticipating tempest and the bolts,
     Hangs curtained terrors round her next day’s door,
     Death’s emblems for the breast of Europe flings;
     The breast that waits a spark to fire her store. 
     Shall, then, the great vitality, France,
     Signal the backward step once more;
     Again a Goddess Fortune trace
     Amid the Deities, and pledge to chance
     One whom we never could replace? 
     Now may she tune her nature’s many strings
     To noble harmony, be seen, be known.

     It was the foreign France, the unruly, feared;
     Little for all her witcheries endeared;
     Theatrical of arrogance, a sprite
     With gaseous vapours overblown,
     In her conceit of power ensphered,
     Foredoomed to violate and atone;
     Her the grim conqueror’s iron might
     Avengeing clutched, distrusting rent;
     Not that sharp intellect with fire endowed
     To cleave our webs, run lightnings through our cloud;
     Not virtual France, the France benevolent,
     The chivalrous, the many-stringed, sublime
     At intervals, and oft in sweetest chime;
     Though perilously instrument,
     A breast for any having godlike gleam. 
     This France could no antagonist disesteem,
     To spurn at heel and confiscate her brood. 
     Albeit a waverer between heart and mind,
     And laurels won from sky or plucked from blood,
     Which wither all the