For the hand is raised behind us, and the bolt smites hard
Through the rending of the doorways, through the death-gap of the Guard,
For the shout of the Three Colours is in Conde and beyond,
And the Guard is flung for carrion in the graveyard of St. Gond;
Through Mondemont and out of it, through Morin marsh and on,
With earthquake of salutation the impossible thing is gone;
Gaul, charioted and charging, great Gaul upon a gun,
Tiptoe on all her thousand years, and trumpeting to the sun,
As day returns, as death returns, swung backward for a span,
Back on the barbarous reign returns the battering-ram of Man.

While that the east held hard and hot like pincers in a forge,
Came like the west wind roaring up the cannon of St. George,
Where the hunt is up and racing over stream and swamp and tarn,
And their batteries, black with battle, hold the bridge-heads of the
Marne;
And across the carnage of the Guard by Paris in the plain
The Normans to the Bretons cried; and the Bretons cheered again;
But he that told the tale went home to his house beside the sea
And burned before St. Barbara, the light of the windows three.
Three candles for an unknown thing, never to come again,
That opened like the eye of God on Paris in the plain.





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