Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Here you will find the Poem After The German Subjugation Of France, 1871 of poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti

After The German Subjugation Of France, 1871

LO the twelfth year?the wedding-feast come round 
With years for months?and lo the babe new-born; 
Out of the womb's rank furnace cast forlorn, 
And with contagious effluence seamed and crown'd. 
To hail this birth, what fiery tongues surround 
Hell's Pentecost?what clamour of all cries 
That swell, from Absalom's scoff to Shimei's, 
One scornful gamut of tumultuous sound!
For now the harlot's heart on a new sleeve 
Is prankt; and her heart's lord of yesterday 
(Spurned from her bed, whose worm-spun silks o'erlay 
Such fretwork as that other worm can weave) 
Takes in his ears the vanished world's last yell, 
And in his flesh the closing teeth of Hell.