University of Virginia Library

XIII

Four nights along the marshy zone of mists
The sleepless line of France resists;
And four nights end those days
With apocalyptic blaze,
Uncertain darkness shot with rays,
And golden smoke
Rolls out over the thick reeds
Deepening the mystery of those dead waters.
The eyeless Chateau Mondement,
Towering and hollow guard,
That like another Lear
Stands at the marshes' end and narrow gate,
Upon his bosky mountain spur
By Poirier's hill white-scarr'd—
Besieged and lost
By either host,
Lighteth no more for the marsh-wanderer
Upon his naked-rafter'd turret spire,
The kindly signal fire
That he for centuries was wont to raise.
Summon'd in vain to be strife's arbiter
He with insane dark gaze
Nightlong upon his plateau listens
Smitten with gun on gun,
And feels beneath his trembling woods,
And about his deep-ravined and dusky base,
The arms of great and little Morin run
Thrilled with the fate of all that they embrace.