That other whom you seek forlorn
  Half earthly was; but I am born
Of the immortals, and our race
Wears still some sadness on its face: 
  He wins me late, but keeps me long,
Who, dowered with every gift of passion,
In that fierce flame can forge and fashion
  Of sin and self the anchor strong; 110
Can thence compel the driving force
Of daily life’s mechanic course,
Nor less the nobler energies
Of needful toil and culture wise;
Whose soul is worth the tempter’s lure,
Who can renounce, and yet endure,
To him I come, not lightly wooed,
But won by silent fortitude.’

VILLA FRANCA

1859

Wait a little:  do we not wait? 
Louis Napoleon is not Fate,
Francis Joseph is not Time;
There’s One hath swifter feet than Crime;
Cannon-parliaments settle naught;
Venice is Austria’s,—­whose is Thought? 
Minie is good, but, spite of change,
Gutenberg’s gun has the longest range. 
  Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 
  Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 
  In the shadow, year out, year in,
  The silent headsman waits forever.

Wait, we say:  our years are long;
Men are weak, out Man is strong;
Since the stars first curved their rings,
We have looked on many things: 
Great wars come and great wars go,
Wolf-tracks light on polar snow;
We shall see him come and gone,
This second-hand Napoleon. 
  Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 
  Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 
  In the shadow, year out, year in,
  The silent headsman waits forever.

We saw the elder Corsican,
And Clotho muttered as she span,
While crowned lackeys bore the train,
Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne: 
’Sister, stint not length of thread! 
Sister, stay the scissors dread! 
On Saint Helen’s granite Weak,
Hark, the vulture whets his beak!’
  Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 
  Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 
  In the shadow, year out, year in,
  The silent headsman waits forever.

The Bonapartes, we know their bees
That wade in honey red to the knees;
Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound
In dreamless garners underground: 
We know false glory’s spendthrift race
Pawning nations for feathers and lace;
It may be short, it may be long,
‘’Tis reckoning-day!’ sneers unpaid Wrong. 
  Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 
  Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 
  In the shadow, year out, year in,
  The silent headsman waits forever.

The Cock that wears the Eagle’s skin
Can promise what he ne’er could win;
Slavery reaped for fine words sown,
System for all, and rights for none,
Despots atop, a wild clan below,
Such is the Gaul from long ago;
Wash the black from the Ethiop’s face,
Wash the past out of man or race! 
  Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 
  Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 
  In the shadow, year out, year in,
  The silent headsman waits forever.