There, with the cup it presents at her lips, she stands, France, with her future staked on the word it may pledge. The vengeance urged of desire a reserve countermands; The patience clasped totters hard on the precipice edge. Lopped of an arm, mother love for her own springs quick, To curdle the milk in 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