In violence of strange visions north and south Confronted, east and west, [_Ant._ 5. With frozen or fiery breast, Eyes fixed or fevered, pale or bloodred mouth, 180 Kept watch about his dawn-enkindled dreams; But ere high noon a light of nearer beams Made his young heaven of manhood more benign, And love made soft his lips with spiritual wine, And left them fired, and fed With sacramental bread, And sweet with honey of tenderer words than tears To feed men's hopes and fortify men's fears, And strong to silence with benignant breath The lips that doom to death, 190 And swift with speech like fire in fiery lands To melt the steel's edge in the headsman's hands.
Higher than they rose of old, [_Ep._ 5. New builded now, behold, The live great likeness of Our Lady's towers; And round them like a dove Wounded, and sick with love, One fair ghost moving, crowned with fateful flowers, Watched yet with eyes of bloodred lust 199 And eyes of love's heart broken and unbroken trust.
But sadder always under shadowier skies, [_Str._ 6. More pale and sad and clear Waxed always, drawn more near, The face of Duty lit with Love's own eyes; Till the awful hands that culled in rosier hours From fairy-footed fields of wild old flowers And sorcerous woods of Rhineland, green and hoary, Young children's chaplets of enchanted story, The great kind hands that showed Exile its homeward road, 210 And, as man's helper made his foeman God, Of pity and mercy wrought themselves a rod, And opened for Napoleon's wandering kin France, and bade enter in, And threw for all the doors of refuge wide, Took to them lightning in the thunder-tide.
For storm on earth above had risen from under, Out of the hollow of hell, [_Ant._ 6. Such storm as never fell From darkest deeps of heaven distract with thunder; A cloud of cursing, past all shape of thought, 221 More foul than foulest dreams, and overfraught With all obscene things and obscure of birth That ever made infection of man's earth; Having all hell for cloak Wrapped round it as a smoke And in its womb such offspring so defiled As earth bare never for her loathliest child, Rose, brooded, reddened, broke, and with its breath Put France to poisonous death; 230 Yea, far as heaven's red labouring eye could glance, France was not, save in men cast forth of France.