Classic Poem

Some message flies through all,
Men are made integral,
We lay down cares, we bid good-bye,
Embrace in the public eye,
Stoop to the children, and depart.
Stranger to stranger passing by
Opens his long-forgotten heart,
Each with amazed weeping hears
The ineffable stark simple truth.
The lads and maidens in their throngs
Outbreaking like the mountain waterfalls
Beneath the breach'd Republic's walls
Flood by, singing the old songs
Of equal, free, fraternity.
Men march out through the barriers
To the last infrangible frontiers,
And the old men with the step of youth.
Some message, fusing all,
Moulds, and makes integral;
Men feel again after their perfect wholes,
Arise the maimed and scattered members
Of all this wounded ground of France.
Out of the plain the leaves that seemed September's
Are gathered by a great wind that controls,
There comes a sob of flame upon the embers —
A wordless breathing on the coals
Passes by; Man remembers
The unity of souls.
And with whose overruling Form do we entwine,
Sparks from the forges, blown through space?
Or that thou, rising evermore
Whirl'd leaf, art become a sign,
That the chill husk becomes a core
And the strange mask, a face,
And the one man, a race,
And that race, a thing divine?

It is the soul of France
That stems the great advance
Of all their cannoniers.