Collected Works (Vol. I)

JEPHTHAH 05 The splendid forehead, crowned with Love and Light, Flames in the starry air : the fallen minions Droplike lost souls through horrid emptinesses To their own black unfathomable abysses ! Now Freedom, flower and star and wind and wave And spirit of the unimagined fire, Begotten on the dishonourable grave Of fallen tyranny, may seek her sire In the pure soul. of Man, her lips may lave In the pure waters of her soul’s desire, Truth: and deep eyes behold thine eyes as deep, Fresh lips kiss thine that kissed her soul from sleep. See Italy, the eagle of all time, Triumphant, from her coffin’s leaden prison, Soar into freedom, seek the heights sublime Of self-reliance, from those depths new- risen, Stirred by the passion of thy mighty rhyme: Eagle, and pheenix: shrill, sharp flames bedizen The burning citadel, where crested Man Leaps sword in hand upon the Vatican. Those dire words spoken, that thine hammer beat, Of fire and steel and music, wrath god- worded, Consuming with immeasurable heat The sties and kennels of priest and king, that girded The loins of many peoples, till the seat Of Hell was shaken to its deep, and herded Hosts of the tyrant trembled, faltered, fled, When none pursued but curses of men dead :— See, from the Calvary of the Son of Man,} Where all the hopes of France were trodden under ; See, from the crucifixion of Sedan Thy thought the lightning, and thy word the thunder ! See her supreme, kingly, republican, New France arisen, with her heart in sunder— Yet throned in Heaven on ever-burning wheels, Freedom resurgent, sealed with seven seals. 1 Napoleon III. VO}... 1. The seal of Reason, made impregnable: The seal of Truth, immeasurably splendid : The seal of Brotherhood, man’s miracle: The seal of Peace, and Wisdom heaven- descended : The seal of Bitterness, cast down to Hell: The seal of Love, secure, not-to-be-rended : The seventh seal, Equality : that, broken, God sets His thunder and earthquake for a token. Now if on France the iron clangours close, Corruption’s desperate hand, and lurking treason, Or alien craft,? or menace of strange blows Wrought of her own sons,® in this bitter season : Lift up thy voice. breathe fury on her foes, Smite bigots yet again, and call on Reason, Reason that must awake, and sternly grip The unhooded serpent of dictatorship ! + Or, if thou have laid aside the starry brand, And scourge, whose knots with their foul blood are rotten Whom thou didst smite; if thine unweary hand Sicken of slaughter ; if thy soul have gotten Its throne in so sublime a fatherland, Above these miscreants and misbegotten ; If even already thy spirit have found peace, Among the thronged immortal secrecies ; If with the soul of Aé’schylus thy soul Talk, and with Sappho’s if thy music mingle ; If with the spirit infinite and whole Of Shakespeare thou commune; if thy brows tingle With Dante’s kiss; if Milton’s thunders roll Amid thy skies ; if thou, supreme and single, Be made as Shelley or as Hugo now, And all their laurels mingle on thy brow— Then (as Elijah, when the whirling fire Caught him) stoop not thy spiritual splendour, And sacred-seeking eyes to our desire, But mould one memory yet, divinely tender, 1 Ultramontanism. Dreyfusardism. Militarism. + At the time this poem was written, French patriots looked with a distrustful eye on Genera! de Gallifet, oxLo E