58 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
58 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
1827
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STANZAS
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by Edgar Allan Poe
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STANZAS
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Stanzas
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How often we forget all time, when lone
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Admiring Nature's universal throne;
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Her woods- her wilds- her mountains- the intense
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Reply of HERS to OUR intelligence! [BYRON, The Island.]
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I
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In youth have I known one with whom the Earth
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In secret communing held- as he with it,
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In daylight, and in beauty from his birth:
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Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
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From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
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A passionate light- such for his spirit was fit-
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And yet that spirit knew not, in the hour
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Of its own fervor what had o'er it power.
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II
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Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
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To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o'er,
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But I will half believe that wild light fraught
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With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
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Hath ever told- or is it of a thought
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The unembodied essence, and no more,
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That with a quickening spell doth o'er us pass
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As dew of the night-time o'er the summer grass?
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III
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Doth o'er us pass, when, as th' expanding eye
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To the loved object- so the tear to the lid
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Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
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And yet it need not be- (that object) hid
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From us in life- but common- which doth lie
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Each hour before us- but then only, bid
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With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken,
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To awake us- 'Tis a symbol and a token
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IV
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Of what in other worlds shall be- and given
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In beauty by our God, to those alone
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Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
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Drawn by their heart's passion, and that tone,
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That high tone of the spirit which hath striven,
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Tho' not with Faith- with godliness- whose throne
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With desperate energy 't hath beaten down;
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Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
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-THE END-
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