In violence of strange visions north and south
  Confronted, east and west, [Ant. 5. 
  With frozen or fiery breast,
  Eyes fixed or fevered, pale or bloodred mouth, 180
  Kept watch about his dawn-enkindled dreams;
  But ere high noon a light of nearer beams
  Made his young heaven of manhood more benign,
  And love made soft his lips with spiritual wine,
  And left them fired, and fed
  With sacramental bread,
  And sweet with honey of tenderer words than tears
  To feed men’s hopes and fortify men’s fears,
  And strong to silence with benignant breath
  The lips that doom to death, 190
  And swift with speech like fire in fiery lands
  To melt the steel’s edge in the headsman’s hands.

        Higher than they rose of old, [Ep. 5. 
        New builded now, behold,
    The live great likeness of Our Lady’s towers;
        And round them like a dove
        Wounded, and sick with love,
    One fair ghost moving, crowned with fateful flowers,
      Watched yet with eyes of bloodred lust 199
And eyes of love’s heart broken and unbroken trust.

  But sadder always under shadowier skies, [Str. 6. 
  More pale and sad and clear
  Waxed always, drawn more near,
  The face of Duty lit with Love’s own eyes;
  Till the awful hands that culled in rosier hours
  From fairy-footed fields of wild old flowers
  And sorcerous woods of Rhineland, green and hoary,
  Young children’s chaplets of enchanted story,
  The great kind hands that showed
  Exile its homeward road, 210
  And, as man’s helper made his foeman God,
  Of pity and mercy wrought themselves a rod,
  And opened for Napoleon’s wandering kin
  France, and bade enter in,
  And threw for all the doors of refuge wide,
  Took to them lightning in the thunder-tide.

  For storm on earth above had risen from under,
  Out of the hollow of hell, [Ant. 6. 
  Such storm as never fell
  From darkest deeps of heaven distract with thunder;
  A cloud of cursing, past all shape of thought, 221
  More foul than foulest dreams, and overfraught
  With all obscene things and obscure of birth
  That ever made infection of man’s earth;
  Having all hell for cloak
  Wrapped round it as a smoke
  And in its womb such offspring so defiled
  As earth bare never for her loathliest child,
  Rose, brooded, reddened, broke, and with its breath
  Put France to poisonous death; 230
  Yea, far as heaven’s red labouring eye could glance,
  France was not, save in men cast forth of France.