Eva sits on the ottoman there,
Sits by a Psyche carved in stone,
With just such a face and just such an air,
As Esther upon her throne.

She's sifting lint for the brave who bled,
And I watch her fingers float and flow
Over the linen, as thread by thread,
It flakes to her lap like snow.

A bracelet clinks on her delicate wrist,
Wrought, as Cellini's were at Rome,
Out of the tears of the amethyst
And the wan Vesuvian foam.

And full on the bauble-crest alway —
A cameo image keen and fine —
Glares thy impetuous knife, Corday,
And the lava-locks are thine.

I thought of the wehr-wolves on our trail,
Their gaunt fangs sluiced with gouts of blood;
Till the Past, in a dead, mesmeric veil,
Drooped with a wizard flood.

Till the surly blaze, through the iron bars,
Shot to the hearth, with a pang and cry —
And a lank howl plunged from the Champ de Mars
To the Column of July.

Till Corday sprang from the gem, I swear,
And the dove-eyed damsel I knew had flown —
For Eva was not on the ottoman there,
By Psyche carved in stone.

She grew like a Pythoness, flushed with fate,
With the incantation in her gaze —
A lip of scorn, an arm of hate,
And a dirge of the Marseillaise!

Eva, the vision was not wild,
When wreaked on the tyrants of the land —
For you were transfigured to Nemesis, child,
With the dagger in your hand!