Two Nations | Page 9

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 3
Where is hope, and promise where, in all these things, Shocks of
strength with strength, and jar of hurtling kings? Who of all men, who
will show us any good? Shall these lightnings of blind battles give men
light? Where is freedom? who will bring us in her sight, That have
hardly seen her footprint where she stood?

STROPHE 4
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
Not of thy sons, O mother many-wounded, Not of thy sons are slaves
ingrafted and grown. Was it not thine, the fire whence light rebounded
From kingdom on rekindling kingdom thrown, From hearts confirmed
on tyrannies confounded, From earth on heaven, fire mightier than his
own? Not thine the breath wherewith time's clarion sounded, And all
the terror in the trumpet blown? The voice whereat the thunders stood
astounded As at a new sound of a God unknown? And all the seas and
shores within them bounded Shook at the strange speech of thy lips
alone, And all the hills of heaven, the storm-surrounded, Trembled, and
all the night sent forth a groan.

ANTISTROPHE 2
What hast thou done that such an hour should be More than another
clothed with blood to thee? Thou hast seen many a bloodred hour
before this one. What art thou that thy lovers should misdoubt? What is
this hour that it should cast hope out? If hope turn back and fall from
thee, what hast thou done?
Thou hast done ill against thine own soul; yea, Thine own soul hast
thou slain and burnt away, Dissolving it with poison into foul thin fume.
Thine own life and creation of thy fate Thou hast set thine hand to

unmake and discreate; And now thy slain soul rises between dread and
doom.
Yea, this is she that comes between them led; That veiled head is thine
own soul's buried head, The head that was as morning's in the whole
world's sight. These wounds are deadly on thee, but deadlier Those
wounds the ravenous poison left on her; How shall her weak hands
hold thy weak hands up to fight?
Ah, but her fiery eyes, her eyes are these That, gazing, make thee shiver
to the knees And the blood