Two Nations | Page 8

nor thee. Yea, let all sceptre-stricken nations lie, But live thou though they die; Let their flags fade as flowers that storm can mar, But thine be like a star; Let England's, if it float not for men free, Fall, and forget the sea; Let France's, if it shadow a hateful head, Drop as a leaf drops dead; Thine let what storm soever smite the rest Smite as it seems him best; Thine let the wind that can, by sea or land, Wrest from thy banner-hand. Die they in whom dies freedom, die and cease, Though the world weep for these; Live thou and love and lift when these lie dead The green and white and red.
§ O our Republic that shalt bind in bands The kingdomless far lands And link the chainless ages; thou that wast With England ere she past Among the faded nations, and shalt be Again, when sea to sea Calls through the wind and light of morning time, And throneless clime to clime Makes antiphonal answer; thou that art Where one man's perfect heart Burns, one man's brow is brightened for thy sake, Thine, strong to make or break; O fair Republic hallowing with stretched hands The limitless free lands, When all men's heads for love, not fear, bow down To thy sole royal crown, As thou to freedom; when man's life smells sweet, And at thy bright swift feet A bloodless and a bondless world is laid; Then, when thy men are made, Let these indeed as we in dreams behold One chosen of all thy fold, One of all fair things fairest, one exalt Above all fear or fault, One unforgetful of unhappier men And us who loved her then; With eyes that outlook suns and dream on graves; With voice like quiring waves; With heart the holier for their memories' sake Who slept that she might wake; With breast the sweeter for that sweet blood lost, And all the milkless cost; Lady of earth, whose large equality Bends but to her and thee; Equal with heaven, and infinite of years, And splendid from quenched tears; Strong with old strength of great things fallen and fled, Diviner for her dead; Chaste of all stains and perfect from all scars, Above all storms and stars, All winds that blow through time, all waves that foam, Our Capitolian Rome.
1867.

ODE ON THE PROCLAMATION OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
To: VICTOR HUGO
(Greek: ailenon ailenon eipe, to d' eu nikato)

STROPHE 1
With songs and crying and sounds of acclamations, Lo, the flame risen, the fire that falls in showers! Hark; for the word is out among the nations: Look; for the light is up upon the hours: O fears, O shames, O many tribulations, Yours were all yesterdays, but this day ours. Strong were your bonds linked fast with lamentations, With groans and tears built into walls and towers; Strong were your works and wonders of high stations, Your forts blood-based, and rampires of your powers: Lo now the last of divers desolations, The hand of time, that gathers hosts like flowers; Time, that fills up and pours out generations; Time, at whose breath confounded empire cowers.

STROPHE 2
What are these moving in the dawn's red gloom? What is she waited on by dread and doom, Ill ministers of morning, bondmen born of night? If that head veiled and bowed be morning's head, If she come walking between doom and dread, Who shall rise up with song and dance before her sight?
Are not the night's dead heaped about her feet? Is not death swollen, and slaughter full of meat? What, is their feast a bride-feast, where men sing and dance? A bitter, a bitter bride-song and a shrill Should the house raise that such bride-followers fill, Wherein defeat weds ruin, and takes for bride-bed France.
For nineteen years deep shame and sore desire Fed from men's hearts with hungering fangs of fire, And hope fell sick with famine for the food of change. Now is change come, but bringing funeral urns; Now is day nigh, but the dawn blinds and burns; Now time long dumb hath language, but the tongue is strange.
We that have seen her not our whole lives long, We to whose ears her dirge was cradle-song, The dirge men sang who laid in earth her living head, Is it by such light that we live to see Rise, with rent hair and raiment, Liberty? Does her grave open only to restore her dead?
Ah, was it this we looked for, looked and prayed, This hour that treads upon the prayers we made, This ravening hour that breaks down good and ill alike? Ah, was it thus we thought to see her and hear, The one love indivisible and dear? Is it her head that hands which strike down wrong must strike?

STROPHE