Dante Gabriel Rossetti | Joan of Arc / Giovanna d'Arco, 1882

This word had Merlin said from of old:-
That out of the Oak Tree Shade,
In the day of France's direst dule,
God's hand should send a Maid.

And where Domremy, by Burgundy,

Sits crowned with its oakenshaw,

Even there Joan d'Arc, the Maid of God's Ark,

The light of the day first saw.

Where spirits go, what man may know?

Yet this may of man be said:

That, when Time is o'er and all hath suffic'd,

Shall the world's chief Christ-fire rise to Christ

From the ashes of Joan the Maid.

from Rossetti's** notebook of 1879-1880