Desire and terror then had each of each: His crown and sword were staked on the magic stroke; Her blood she gave as one who loved her leech; And both did barter under union’s cloak. An union in hot fever and fierce need Of either’s aid, distrust in trust did breed. Their traffic instincts hooded their live wits To issues. Never human fortune throve On such alliance. Viewed by fits, From Vulcan’s forge a hovering Jove Evolved. The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove. Her awe of him his dread of her invoked: His nature with her shivering faith ran yoked. What wisdom counselled, Policy declined; All perils dared he save the step behind. Ahead his grand initiative becked: One spark of radiance blurred, his orb was wrecked. Stripped to the despot upstart, for success He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness. He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught, While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught He held in hand, while losing it; pressed advance, Pricked for her lees the veins of wasted France; Who, had he stayed to husband her, had spun The strength he taxed unripened for his throw, In vengeful casts calamitous, On fields where palsying Pyrrhic laurels grow, The luminous the ruinous. An incalescent scorpion, And fierier for the mounded cirque That narrowed at him thick and murk, This gambler with his genius Flung lives in angry volleys, bloody lightnings, flung His fortunes to the hosts he stung, With victories clipped his eagle’s wings. By the hands that built him up was he undone: By the star aloft, which was his ram’s-head will Within; by the toppling throne the soldier won; By the yeasty ferment of what once had been, To cloud a rational mind for present things; By his own force, the suicide in his mill. Needs never God of Vengeance intervene When giants their last lesson have to learn. Fighting against an end he could discern, The chivalry whereof he had none He called from his worn slave’s abundant springs: Not deigning spousally entreat That ever blinded by his martial skill, But harsh to have her worship counted out In human coin, her vital rivers drained, Her infant forests felled, commanded die The decade thousand deaths for his Imperial seat, Where throning he her faith in him maintained; Bound Reason to believe delayed defeat Was triumph; and what strength in her remained To head against the ultimate foreseen rout, Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will, Servant and sycophant: without ally, In Python’s coils, the Master Craftsman still; The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly, The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout, The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers, Striking from black disaster starry showers. Her supreme player of man’s primaeval game, He won his harnessed victim’s rapturous shout,