Who is this that rises red with wounds and splendid, All her breast and brow made beautiful with scars, Burning bare as naked daylight, undefended, In her hands for spoils her splintered prison-bars, In her eyes the light and fire of long pain ended, In her lips a song as of the morning stars? STROPHE 5 O torn out of thy trance, O deathless, O my France, O many-wounded mother, O redeemed to reign! O rarely sweet and bitter The bright brief tears that glitter On thine unclosing eyelids, proud of their own pain; The beautiful brief tears That wash the stains of years White as the names immortal of thy chosen and slain. O loved so much so long, O smitten with such wrong, O purged at last and perfect without spot or stain, Light of the light of man, Reborn republican, At last, O first Republic, hailed in heaven again! Out of the obscene eclipse Rerisen, with burning lips To witness for us if we looked for thee in vain. STROPHE 6 Thou wast the light whereby men saw Light, thou the trumpet of the law Proclaiming manhood to mankind; And what if all these years were blind And shameful? Hath the sun a flaw Because one hour hath power to draw Mist round him wreathed as links to bind? And what if now keen anguish drains The very wellspring of thy veins And very spirit of thy breath? The life outlives them and disdains; The sense which makes the soul remains, And blood of thought which travaileth To bring forth hope with procreant pains. O thou that satest bound in chains Between thine hills and pleasant plains As whom his own soul vanquisheth, Held in the bonds of his own thought, Whence very death can take off nought, Nor sleep, with bitterer dreams than death, What though thy thousands at thy knees Lie thick as grave-worms feed on these, Though thy green fields and joyous places Are populous with blood-blackening faces And wan limbs eaten by the sun? Better an end of all men's races, Better the world's whole work were done, And life wiped out of all our traces, And there were left to time not one, Than such as these that fill thy graves Should sow in slaves the seed of slaves. ANTISTROPHE 1