More strong than strong disaster, [Ant. 6. 
  For fate and fear too strong;
Earth’s friend, whose eyes look past her,
  Whose hands would purge of wrong;
Our lord, our light, our master,
  Whose word sums up all song.

Be it April or September [Str. 7. 
  That plays his perfect part,
Burn June or blow December,
  Thou canst not in thine heart
But rapturously remember,
  All heavenlike as thou art,

Whose footfall made thee fairer, [Ant. 7. 
  Whose passage more divine,
Whose hand, our thunder-bearer,
  Held fire that bade thee shine
With subtler glory and rarer
  Than thrills the sun’s own shrine.

Who knows how then his godlike banished gaze
Turned haply from its goal of natural days
And homeward hunger for the clear French clime,
Toward English earth, whereunder now the Accursed
Rots, in the hate of all men’s hearts inhearsed,
A carrion ranker to the sense of time
For that sepulchral gift of stone and lime
By royal grace laid on it, less of weight
Than the load laid by fate,
Fate, misbegotten child of his own crime,
Son of as foul a bastard-bearing birth
As even his own on earth;
Less heavy than the load of cursing piled
By loyal grace of all souls undefiled
On one man’s head, whose reeking soul made rotten
The loathed live corpse on earth once misbegotten? 
But when our Master’s homeless feet were here
France yet was foul with joy more foul than fear,
And slavery chosen, more vile by choice of chance
Than dull damnation of inheritance
From Russian year to year
Alas fair mother of men, alas my France,
What ailed thee so to fall, that wert so dear
For all men’s sake to all men, in such trance,
Plague-stricken?  Had the very Gods, that saw
Thy glory lighten on us for a law,
Thy gospel go before us for a guide,
Had these waxed envious of our love and awe,
Or was it less their envy than thy pride
That bared thy breast for the obscene vulture-claw,
High priestess, by whose mouth Love prophesied
That fate should yet mean freedom?  Howsoever,
That hour, the helper of men’s hearts, we praise,
Which blots out of man’s book of after days
The name above all names abhorred for ever. 
And His name shall we praise not, whom these flowers,
These rocks and ravening waters bound for girth
Round this wild starry spanlong plot of earth,
Beheld, the mightier for those heavier hours
That bowed his heart not down
Nor marred one crowning blossom of his crown? 
For surely, might we say,
Even from the dark deep sea-gate that makes way
Through channelled darkness for the darkling day
Hardly to let men’s faltering footfall win
The sunless passage in,
Where breaks a world aflower against the sun,