O Glorious France

    You have become a forge of snow white fire,
    A crucible of molten steel, O France!
    Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
    And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
    They pass through meteor changes with a song
    Which to all islands and all continents
    Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
    Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child
    Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
    Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
    Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
    Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
    Or seventy years.

    These are not all of life,
    O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
    Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
    Clog the ensanguinéd ice. But life to these
    Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision,
    And the keen ecstasy of fated strife,
    And divination of the loss as gain,
    And reading mysteries with brightened eyes
    In fiery shock and dazzling pain before
    The 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 strength
    And is no more afraid. And in the stroke
    Of azure lightning when the hidden essence
    And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth
    And mystical significance in time
    Are instantly distilled to one clear drop
    Which mirrors earth and heaven.

        This is life
    Flaming to heaven in a minute's span
    When the breath of battle blows the smoldering spark.
    And across these seas
    We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling
    To cities, happiness, or daily toil
    For daily bread, or trail the long routine
    Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine
    Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup
    Empty and ringing by the finished feast;
    Or have it shaken from your hand by sight
    Of God against the olive woods.

    As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees
    With sacred joy first heard the voices, then
    Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field
    Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire,
    Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived
    The dream and known the meaning of the dream,
    And read its riddle: How the soul of man
    May to one greatest purpose make itself
    A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup
    Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall
    Turns sweet to soul's surrender.

    And you say:
    Take days for repetition, stretch your hands
    For 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 springs
    Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields -
    The prison house grows close no less, the feast
    A place of memory sick for senses dulled
    Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time
    Grown weary cries Enough!