571 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
571 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
1890
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HUMANITAD
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by Oscar Wilde
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HUMANITAD
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It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
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Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
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Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
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The Autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
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Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
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To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as
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though it blew
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From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
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Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
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Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day
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From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
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Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
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Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering
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housedogs creep
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From the shut stable to the frozen stream
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And back again disconsolate, and miss
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The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
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And overhead in circling listlessness
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The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
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Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the
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ice-pools crack
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Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
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And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
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And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
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Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
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And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
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Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull
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gray sky.
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Full winter: and a lusty goodman brings
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His load of faggots from the chilly byre,
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And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings
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The sappy billets on the waning fire,
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And laughs to see the sudden lightning scare
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His children at their play; and yet,- the Spring
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is in the air,
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Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,
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And soon yon blanched fields will bloom again
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With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,
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For with the first warm kisses of the rain
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The winter's icy, sorrow breaks to tears,
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And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes
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the rabbit peers
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From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,
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And treads one snowdrop under foot and runs
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Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly
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Across our path at evening, and the suns
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Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see
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Grass-girdled Spring in all her joy of laughing
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greenery
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Dance through the hedges till the early rose,
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(That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)
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Burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose
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The little quivering disk of golden fire
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Which the bees know so well, for with it come
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Pale boy's love, sops-in-wine, and daffodillies
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all in bloom.
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Then up and down the field the sower goes,
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While close behind the laughing younker scares,
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With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows.
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And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,
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And on the grass the creamy blossom falls
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In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals
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Steal from the bluebells' nodding carillons
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Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,
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That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons
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With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine
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In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed
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And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose
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hath shed
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Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
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And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
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Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
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Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise
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And violets getting overbold withdraw
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From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot
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the leafless haw.
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O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!
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Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock,
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And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,
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Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
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Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon
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Through the green leaves will float the hum of
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murmuring bees at noon.
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Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,
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The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns
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Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture
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Will tell their bearded pearls, and carnations
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With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,
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And straggling traveller's joy each hedge with yellow
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stars will bind.
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Dear Bride of Nature and most bounteous Spring!
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That can'st give increase to the sweet-breath'd kine,
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And to the kid its little horns, and bring
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The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,
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Where is that old nepenthe which of yore
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Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!
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There was a time when any common bird
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Could make me sing in unison, a time
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When all the strings of boyish life were stirred
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To quick response or more melodious rhyme
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By every forest idyll;- do I change?
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Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair
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pleasaunce range?
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Nay, nay, thou art the same: 'tis I who seek
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To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,
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And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek
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Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
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Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare
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To taint such wine with the salt poison of his
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own despair!
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Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul
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Takes discontent to be its paramour,
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And gives its kingdom to the rude control
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Of what should be its servitor,- for sure
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Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea
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Contain it not, and the huge deep answer
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"'Tis not in me."
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To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect
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In natural honor, not to bend the knee
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In profitless prostrations whose effect
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Is by, itself condemned, what alchemy
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Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed
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Will bring the unexultant peace of essence
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not subdued?
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The minor chord which ends the harmony,
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And for its answering brother waits in vain,
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Sobbing for incompleted melody
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Dies a swan's death; but I the heir of pain
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A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes
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Wait for the light and music of those suns which
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never rise.
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The quanched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
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The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
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The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb,-
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Were not these better far than to return
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To my old fitful restless malady,
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Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?
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Nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned God
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Is like the watcher by a sick man's bed
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Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod
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Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,
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Death is too rude, too obvious a key
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To solve one single secret in a life's philosophy.
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And love! that noble madness, whose august
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And inextinguishable might can slay
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The soul with honeyed drugs,- alas! I must
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From such sweet ruin play the runaway,
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Although too constant memory never can
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Forget the arched splendor of those brows Olympian
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Which for a little season made my youth
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So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence
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That all the chiding of more prudent Truth
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Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,- O Hence
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Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis!
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Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous
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bliss
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My lips have drunk enough,- no more, no more,-
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Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow
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Back to the troubled waters of this shore
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Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now
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The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,
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Hence! Hence! I pass unto a life more barren,
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more austere.
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More barren- ay, those arms will never lean
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Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul
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In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;
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Some other head must wear that aureole,
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For I am Hers who loves not any man
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Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign
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Gorgonian.
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Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,
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And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair,
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With net and spear and hunting equipage
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Let young Adonis to his tryst repair,
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But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell
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Delights no more, though I could win her
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dearest citadel.
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Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy
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Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud
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Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy
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And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed
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In wonder at her feet, not for the sake
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Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take.
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Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!
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And, if my lips be musicless, inspire
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At least my life: was not thy glory hymned
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By one who gave to thee his sword and lyre
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Like Aeschylus at well-fought Marathon,
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And died to show that Milton's England still
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could bear a son!
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And yet I cannot tread the portico
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And live without desire, fear and pain,
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Or nurture that wise calm which long ago
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The grave Athenian master taught to men,
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Self-poised, self-centered, and self-comforted,
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To watch the world's vain phantasies go by with
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unbowed head.
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Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,
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Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,
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Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse
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Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne
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Is childless; in the night which she had made
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For lofty secure flight Athena's owl itself
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hath strayed.
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Nor much with Science do I care to climb,
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Although by strange and subtle witchery
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She draw the moon from heaven: the Muse of Time
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Unrolls her gorgeous-colored tapestry
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To no less eager eyes; often indeed
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In the great epic of Polymnia's scroll I love
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to read
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How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war
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Against a little town, and panoplied
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In gilded mail with jewelled scimetar,
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White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede
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Between the waving poplars and the sea
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Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylae
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Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,
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And on the nearer side a little brood
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Of careless lions holding festival!
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And stood amazed at such hardihood,
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And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore,
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And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept
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at midnight o'er
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Some unfrequented height, and coming down
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The autumn forests treacherously slew
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What Sparta held most dear and was the crown
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Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew
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How God had staked an evil net for him
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In the small bay of Salamis,- and yet,
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the page grows dim.
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Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel
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With such a goodly time too out of tune
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To love it much: for like the Dial's wheel
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That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon
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Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes
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Restlessly follow that which from my cheated
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vision flies.
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O for one grand unselfish simple life
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To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills
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Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife
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Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
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Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly
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Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!
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Speak ye Ridalian laurels! where is He
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Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul
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Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty
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Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal
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Where Love and Duty mingle! Him at least
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The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at
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Wisdom's feast,
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But we are Learning's changelings, known by rote
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The clarion watchword of each Grecian school
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And follow none, the flawless sword which smote
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The pagan Hydra is an effete tool
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Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now
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Shall scale the august ancient heights and to
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old Reverence bow?
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One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!
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Gone is that last dear son of Italy,
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Who being man died for the sake of God,
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And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully.
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O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto's tower,
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Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lower
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Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or
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The Arno with its tawny troubled gold
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O'erleap its marge, no mightier conqueror
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Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old
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When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty
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Walked like a Bride beside him, at which
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sight pale Mystery
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Fled shrieking to her furthest somberest cell
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With an old man who grabbled rusty keys,
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Fled shuddering for that immemorial knell
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With which oblivion buries dynasties
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Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast,
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As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.
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He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome,
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He drave the base wolf from the lion's lair,
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And now lies dead by that empyreal dome
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Which overtops Valdarno hung in air
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By Brunelleschi- O Melpomene
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Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy
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sweetest threnody!
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Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies
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That Joy's self may grow jealous, and the Nine
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Forget a-while their discreet emperies,
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Mourning for him who on Rome's lordliest shrine
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Lit for men's lives the light of Marathon,
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And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!
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O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto's tower,
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Let some young Florentine each eventide
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Bring coronals of that enchanted flower
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Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide,
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And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies
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Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of
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mortal eyes.
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Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings,
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Being tempest-driven to the furthest rim
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Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings
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Of the eternal chanting Cherubim
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Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away
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Into a moonless void- and yet, though he is
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dust and clay,
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He is not dead, the immemorial Fates
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Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain,
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Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!
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Ye argent clarions sound a loftier strain!
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For the vile thing he hated lurks within
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Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.
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Still what avails it that she sought her cave
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That murderous mother of red harlotries?
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At Munich on the marble architrave
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The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
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Which wash Aegina fret in loneliness
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Not mirroring their beauty, so our lives grow
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colourless
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For lack of our ideals, if one star
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Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust
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Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
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Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust
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Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe
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For all her stony sorrows hath her sons, but Italy!
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What Easter Day shall make her children rise,
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Who were not Gods yet suffered, what sure feet
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Shall find their graveclothes folded? what clear eyes
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Shall see them bodily? O it were meet
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To roll the stone from off the sepulchre
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And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds,
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in love of Her
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Our Italy! our mother visible!
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Most blessed among nations and most sad,
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For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell
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That day at Aspromonte and was glad
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That in an age when God was bought and sold
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One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt
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out and cold,
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See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves
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Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty
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Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives
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Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,
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And no word said:- O we are wretched men
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Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen
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Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword
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Which slew its master righteously? the years
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Have lost their ancient leader, and no word
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Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears;
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While as a ruined mother in some spasm
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Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best
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enthusiasm
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Genders unlawful children, Anarchy
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Freedom's own Judas, the vile prodigal
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License who steals the gold of Liberty
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And yet nothing, Ignorance the real
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One Fratricide since Cain, Envy the asp
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That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose
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palsied grasp
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Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed
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For whose dull appetite men waste away
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Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed
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Of things which slay their sower, these each day
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Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet
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Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely
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street.
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What even Cromwell spared is desecrated
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By weed and worm, left to the stormy play
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Of wind and beating snow, or renovated
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By more destructful hands: Time's worst decay
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Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,
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But these new Vandals can but make a rainproof
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barrenness.
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Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing
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Through Lincoln's lofty choir, till the air
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Seems from such marble harmonies to ring
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With sweeter song than common lips can dare
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To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now
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The cunning hand which made the flowering
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hawthorn branches bow
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For Southwell's arch, and carved the House of One
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Who loved the lilies of the field with all
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Our dearest English flowers? the same sun
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Rises for us: the season's natural
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Weave the same tapestry of green and gray:
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The unchanged hills are with us: but that
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Spirit hath passed away.
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And yet perchance it may be better so,
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For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,
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Murder her brother is her bedfellow,
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And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene
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And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;
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Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!
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For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
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Of living in the healthful air, the swift
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Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free
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And women chaste, these are the things which lift
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Our souls up more than even Agnolo's
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Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o'er the scroll of human woes,
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Or Titian's little maiden on the stair
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White as her own sweet lily and as tall,
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Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,-
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Ah! somehow life is bigger after all
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Than any painted angel could we see
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The God that is within us! The old Greek serenity
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Which curbs the passion of that level line
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Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes
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And chastened limbs ride round Athena's shrine
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And mirror her divine economies,
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And balanced symmetry of what in man
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Would else wage ceaseless warfare,- this at least
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within the span
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Between our mother's kisses and the grave
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Might so inform our lives, that we could win
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Such mighty empires that from her cave
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Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin
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Would walk ashamed of his adulteries,
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And Passion creep from out the House of Lust
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with startled eyes.
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To make the Body and the Spirit one
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With all right things, till no thing live in vain
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From morn to noon, but in sweet unison
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With every pulse of flesh and throb of pain
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The Soul in flawless essence high enthroned,
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Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,
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Mark with serene impartiality
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The strife of things, and yet be comforted,
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Knowing that by the chain causality
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All separate existences are wed
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Into one supreme whole, whose utterance
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Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this
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were governance
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Of life in most august omnipresence,
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Through which the rational intellect would find
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In passion its expression, and mere sense
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Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind,
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And being joined with it in harmony
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More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary
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Strike from their several tones one octave chord
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Whose cadence being measureless would fly
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Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord
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Return refreshed with its new empery
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And more exultant power,- this indeed
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Could we but reach it were to find the last,
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the perfect creed.
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Ah! it was easy when the world was young
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To keep one's life free and inviolate,
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From our sad lips another song is rung,
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By our own hands our heads are desecrate,
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Wanderers in drear exile and dispossessed
|
|
Of what should be our own, we can but feed
|
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on wild unrest.
|
|
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Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown,
|
|
And of all men we are most wretched who
|
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Must live each other's lives and not our own
|
|
For very pity's sake and then undo
|
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All that we live for- it was otherwise
|
|
When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic
|
|
symphonies.
|
|
|
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But we have left those gentle haunts to pass
|
|
With weary feet to the new Calvary,
|
|
Where we behold, as one who in a glass
|
|
Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity,
|
|
And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze
|
|
Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of
|
|
man can raise.
|
|
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O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn!
|
|
O chalice of all common miseries!
|
|
Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne
|
|
An agony of endless centuries,
|
|
And we were vain and ignorant nor knew
|
|
That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real
|
|
hearts we slew.
|
|
|
|
Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds,
|
|
The night that covers and the lights that fade,
|
|
The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds,
|
|
The lips betraying and the life betrayed;
|
|
The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we
|
|
Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.
|
|
|
|
Is this the end of all that primal force
|
|
Which, in its changes being still the same,
|
|
From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course,
|
|
Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame,
|
|
Till the suns met in heaven and began
|
|
Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the
|
|
Word was Man!
|
|
|
|
Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though
|
|
The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain,
|
|
Loosen the nails- we shall come down I know,
|
|
Stanch the red wounds- we shall be whole again,
|
|
No need have we of hyssop-laden rod,
|
|
That which is purely human that is Godlike that is God.
|
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|
THE END
|
|
.
|