Classic Poem

By gift of the life communal she reigned
Who never yet to Christendom played false
Nor yet the light belied,
Belying that through which she had attained.
Yet, still unsatisfied,
France, the propylon of the west,
Forecourt of ecstasy's imaginings,
With crowded front of half a thousand kings
And saints, like Reims's doors eternal,
Rose-window'd, deep-recess'd,
Hath raised her triple portal —
Free, equal, and fraternal —
Yet is herself unsatisfied;
Long as her state body from soul divide
She knows her state is but the destined portal
Into another that shall make more free.
Leader is she to us
Because with such a self unsatisfied;
And, she being perill'd thus,
Voices not ours in her defence
(Like some troubled and illumined sense
Exchanged between the sun's and the earth's desire)
Descend and call on us
To defend, and to fulfil.