University of Virginia Library

XIV

Four nights doth parching battle sway
Towards the fourth inexorable day;
Then outbreaks autumn tempest, rain and hail
Towards evening of the day.
And, with the rising of that sunset gale,
When at last the long-awaited Forty-second
Division rode down to Corroy
Everywhere then came leapings of the heart!
Whisperers strange upstart,
Leaf-hosts in whirl'd careers
Down Marne's cliffs, willow'd reaches, swollen weirs,
Over the bridge of Lagny's foundered piers
And St. Rémy's cannon-lighted heart;
From vineyard, marsh, heath, copse,
Caught up to mix above the forest tops,
And blazon'd on a hundred winds to dance
Upon the glowing misty airs
With low and feverish cries
Whirls the whole realm of leaves.
And the young men, lifting up their fierce exhausted eyes
Above the woods of Gault and forests of Traonne,
And from the seven poplar'd roads
Threading the marshland zone,
Behold the voyage of those torn leaves
And, launched above their spiral rise
Out of all her deep and stubborn families,
They see ascend the wingèd feet of France
Terribly to repel.
“Behold her,” cry the leaves and winds eternal,
“Thrice holy, the maternal,
Thrice holy, the son-shaper,
Herself our radiant eddy of star vapour
Out of whirlwinds of the planet, plant and shell,
Emerging to repair her wounded cell.”
They remember her, red leaves, and with no fears.
Not in the day serene,
In cities of the vintage proud,
Plainly by them was this Immortal seen,
But now, against the midnight thundercloud,
Above the shell-pits of our field of dead.
Her lineaments are clear, devoid of dread,
The glories of her wings are bow'd
To us, when our light fails
And to the inconsolable her face unveils.
The soul of one called France—
A secret spirit—far
Stronger than any France—
Hath turned the tide of war
And baulk'd the great advance
Of yonder cannoniers.