Immortal Mother of a mortal host! Thou suffering of the wounds that will not slay, Wounds that bring death but take not life away!— Stand fast and hearken while thy victors boast: Hearken, and loathe that music evermore. Slip loose thy garments woven of pride and shame: The torture lurks in them, with them the blame Shall pass to leave thee purer than before. Undo thy jewels, thinking whence they came, For what, and of the abominable name Of her who in imperial beauty wore. O Mother of a fated fleeting host Conceived in the past days of sin, and born Heirs of disease and arrogance and scorn, Surrender, yield the weight of thy great ghost, Like wings on air, to what the heavens proclaim With trumpets from the multitudinous mounds Where peace has filled the hearing of thy sons: Albeit a pang of dissolution rounds Each new discernment of the undying ones, Do thou stoop to these graves here scattered wide Along thy fields, as sunless billows roll; These ashes have the lesson for the soul. ‘Die to thy Vanity, and strain thy Pride, Strip off thy Luxury: that thou may’st live, Die to thyself,’ they say, ‘as we have died From dear existence and the foe forgive, Nor pray for aught save in our little space To warn good seed to greet the fair earth’s face.’ O Mother! take their counsel, and so shall The broader world breathe in on this thy home, Light clear for thee the counter-changing dome, Strength give thee, like an ocean’s vast expanse Off mountain cliffs, the generations all, Not whirling in their narrow rings of foam, But as a river forward. Soaring France! Now is Humanity on trial in thee: Now may’st thou gather humankind in fee: Now prove that Reason is a quenchless scroll; Make of calamity thine aureole, And bleeding head us thro’ the troubles of the sea. ALSACE-LORRAINE I THE sister Hours in circles linked, Daughters of men, of men the mates, Are gone on flow with the day that winked, With the night that spanned at golden gates. Mothers, they leave us, quickening seed; They bear us grain or flower or weed, As we have sown; is nought extinct For them we fill to be our Fates. Life of the breath is but the loan; Passing death what we have sown. Pearly are they till the pale inherited stain Deepens in us, and the mirrors they form on their flow Darken to feature and nature: a volumed chain, Sequent of issue, in various eddies they show. Theirs is the Book of the River of Life, to read Leaf by leaf by reapers of long-sown seed: There doth our shoot up to light from a spiriting sane Stand as a tree whereon numberless clusters grow: Legible there how the heart, with its one false move Cast Eurydice pallor on all we love.