You have become a forge of snow-white fire, 
A crucible of molten steel, O France! 
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn 
And fade in light for you, O glorious France! 
They pass through meteor changes with a song 
Which to all islands and all continents 
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame, 
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child, 
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power, 
Nor many days spent in a chosen work, 
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme 
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths 
Of seventy years. 

These are not all of life, 
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder 
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead 
Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these 
Prophetic and enraptured souls in vision, 
And the keen ecstasy of faded strife, 
And divination of the loss as gain, 
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes 
In fiery shock and dazzling pain before 
The orient splendour of the face of Death, 
As a great light beside a shadowy sea; 
And in a high will's strenuous exercise, 
Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength 
And is no more afraid, and in the stroke 
Of azure lightning when the hidden essence 
And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth 
And mystical significance in time 
Are instantly distilled to one clear drop 
Which mirrors earth and heaven. 

This is life 
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span 
When the breath of battle blows the smouldering spark. 
And across these seas 
We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling 
To cities, happiness, or daily toil 
For daily bread, or trail the long routine 
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine 
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup 
Empty and ringing by the finished feast; 
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight 
Of God against the olive woods. 

As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees 
With sacred joy first heard the voices, then 
Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field 
Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire, 
Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived 
The dream and known the meaning of the dream, 
And read its riddle: how the soul of man 
May to one greatest purpose make itself 
A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup 
Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall 
Turns sweet to soul's surrender. 

And you say: 
Take days for repitition, stretch your hands 
For mocked renewal of familiar things: 
The beaten path, the chair beside the window, 
The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep, 
And waking to the task, or many springs 
Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields -- 
The prison-house grows close no less, the feast 
A place of memory sick for senses dulled 
Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time 
Grown weary cries Enough!