O GLORIOUS FRANCE
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ou have become a forge of snow white fire,A crucible of molten steel, O France!Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawnAnd fade in light for you, O glorious France!They pass through meteor changes with a songWhich to all islands and all continentsSays life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor childNor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,Nor many days spent in a chosen work,Nor honored merit, nor the patterned themeOf daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreathsOr seventy years. These are not all of life,O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunderOf cannon stand in trenches where the deadClog the ensanguinéd ice. But life to theseProphetic and enraptured souls is vision,And the keen ecstasy of fated strife,And divination of the loss as gain,And reading mysteries with brightened eyesIn fiery shock and dazzling pain beforeThe orient splendor of the face of Death,As a great light beside a shadowy sea;And in a high will's strenuous exercise,Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strengthAnd is no more afraid. And in the strokeOf azure lightning when the hidden essenceAnd shifting meaning of man's spiritual worthAnd mystical significance in timeAre instantly distilled to one clear dropWhich mirrors earth and heaven. This is lifeFlaming to heaven in a minute's spanWhen the breath of battle blows the smoldering spark.And across these seasWe who cry Peace and treasure life and clingTo cities, happiness, or daily toilFor daily bread, or trail the long routineOf seventy years, taste not the terrible wineWhereof you drink, who drain and toss the cupEmpty and ringing by the finished feast;Or have it shaken from your hand by sightOf God against the olive woods. As Joan of Arc amid the apple treesWith sacred joy first heard the voices, thenObeying plunged at Orleans in a fieldOf spears and lived her dream and died in fire,Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast livedThe dream and known the meaning of the dream,And read its riddle: How the soul of manMay to one greatest purpose make itselfA lens of clearness, how it loves the cupOf deepest truth, and how its bitterest gallTurns sweet to soul's surrender. And you say:Take days for repetition, stretch your handsFor mocked renewal of familiar things:The beaten path, the chair beside the window,The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep,And waking to the task, or many springsOf lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields--The prison house grows close no less, the feastA place of memory sick for senses dulledDown to the dusty end where pitiful TimeGrown weary cries Enough!
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