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The comet hanging o'er the waste dark seas, The massy rainbow curved in front of it, Beyond the village with the masts and trees;

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The snaky imp, dog-headed, from the Pit, Bearing upon its batlike leathern pinions Her name unfolded in the sun's dominions,

The MELENCOLIA' that transcends all wit. Thus has the artist copied her, and thus 865 Surrounded to expound her form sublime, Her fate heroic and calamitous;

Fronting the dreadful mysteries of Time, Unvanquished in defeat and desolation, Undaunted in the hopeless conflagration 870 Of the day setting on her baffled prime. Baffled and beaten back she works on still, Weary and sick of soul she works the more, Sustained by her indomitable will:

The hands shall fashion and the brain

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shall pore And all her sorrow shall be turned to labour, Till death the friend-foe piercing with his sabre

That mighty heart of hearts ends bitter

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He cried out through the night:
It spread vaguely white,

With its ghost of a moon
Above the dark swoon
Of the earth lying chill,
Breathless, grave still.

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Beneath and around

Then all again still.

The sense that every struggle brings defeat Because Fate holds no prize to crown suc

cess;

A long shuddering thrill

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AN empty laugh, I heard it on the road
Shivering the twilight with its lance of mirth;
And yet why empty? Knowing not its
birth,

This much I know, that it goes up to God;
And if to God, from God it surely starts, 5
Who has within Himself the secret springs
Of all the lovely, causeless, unclaimed things,
And loves them in His very heart of hearts.
A girl of fifteen summers, pure and free,
Æolian, vocal to the lightest touch
Of fancy's winnowed breath - Ah, happy
such

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Whose life is music of the eternal sea!
Laugh on, laugh loud and long, merry
child,

And be not careful to unearth a cause:
Thou art serenely placed above our laws, 15
And we in thee with God are reconciled.

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That move thy life, nor will they suffer let, Nor change their scope; else, living, thou

wert dead.

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"This is thy life: indulge its natural flow, And carve these forms. They yet may

find a place

On shelves for them reserved. In any case, I bid thee carve them, knowing what I know.'

A WISH

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OF two things one: with Chaucer let me ride,
And hear the Pilgrims' tales; or, that denied,
Let me with Petrarch in a dew-sprent grove
Ring endless changes on the bells of love.

THE VOICES OF NATURE
THIS cluck of water in the tangles
What said it to the Angles?

*Collected Poems, The Macmillan Company, 1900. By permission of the Publishers.

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Were silver castanets

ODE

WE are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams:

That tinkled 'mong the vanities, and quick- Yet we are the movers and shakers

ened

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Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample a kingdom down.

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We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself in our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the Old of the New World's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration

Is the life of each generation;

A wondrous thing of our dreaming Unearthly, impossible seemingThe soldier, the king, and the peasant Are working together in one,

Till our dream shall become their present, And their work in the world be done.

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And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;

And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joys or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we!

The glory about us clinging

Of the glorious futures we see,

Our souls with high music ringing:

O men! it must ever be

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That we dwell, in our dreaming and sing

ing,

A little apart from ye.

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The lily of your bended head,

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The bindweed of your hair:

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From the dazzling unknown shore; Bring us hither your sun and your summers, And renew our world as of yore; You shall teach us your song's new numbers, And things that we dreamed not before: 70 Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more.

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Thrush, blackbird, linnet, without pause, The burden did repeat,

And still began again because

You were more sweet.

And then I went down to the sea,
And heard it murmuring too,
Part of an ancient mystery,
All made of me and you.
How many a thousand years ago
I loved, and you were sweet,
Longer I could not stay, and so
I fled back to your feet.

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HEATHER ALE

FROM the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together

In their dwellings underground.

There rose a king in Scotland,
A fell man to his foes,

He smote the Picts in battle,
He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain
He hunted as they fied,
And strewed the dwarfish bodies
Of the dying and the dead.

Summer came in the country,
Red was the heather bell;"

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Rudely plucked from their hiding,
Never a word they spoke:
A son and his agèd father
Last of the dwarfish folk.

And the king sat high on his charger,
He looked on the little men;

And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
Looked at the king again.
Down by the shore he had them;
And there on the giddy brink
'I will give you life, ye vermin,
For the secret of the drink.'

There stood the son and father
And they looked high and low;
The heather was red around them,
The sea rumbled below.
And up and spoke the father,
Shrill was his voice to hear:
'I have a word in private,

A word for the royal ear.

'Life is dear to the agèd,

And honour a little thing;
I would gladly sell the secret,'
Quoth the Pict to the king.

His voice was small as a sparrow's,

And shrill and wonderful clear: 'I would gladly sell my secret, Only my son I fear.

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But the manner of the brewing Was none alive to tell.

And it's I will tell the secret That I have sworn to keep.'

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In graves that were like children's On many a mountain head,

They took the son and bound him, Neck and heels in a thong,

The Brewsters of the Heather

And a lad took him and swung him,

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Lay numbered with the dead.

And flung him far and strong,

And the sea swallowed his body,

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