Imatges de pàgina
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It has a glory, and nought else can share it: The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy,

Chasing away all worldliness and folly: Coming sometimes like fearful claps of thunder,

Or the low rumblings earth's regions under;

And sometimes like a gentle whispering 29 Of all the secrets of some wond'rous thing That breathes about us in the vacant air; So that we look around with prying stare, Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial limning;

And catch soft floatings from a faint-heard hymning;

To see the laurel wreath, on high suspended, That is to crown our name when life is

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But what is higher beyond thought than A growing splendour round about me hung,

thee?

Fresher than berries of a mountain-tree?

More strange, more beautiful, more smooth,

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And echo back the voice of thine own

tongue ?

O Poesy! for thee I grasp my pen,

That am not yet a glorious denizen

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O ye whose charge It is to hover round our pleasant hills! Whose congregated majesty so fills My boundly reverence, that I cannot trace Your hallowed names, in this unholy place, So near those common folk; did not their shames

211

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Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn, Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres

Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs And thorns of life; forgetting the great end

Of Poesy, that it should be a friend Affright you? Did our old lamenting To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts

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Between two hills. All hail, delightful Lifted to the white clouds. Therefore

hopes!

As she was wont, th' imagination
Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,
And they shall be accounted poet kings
Who simply tell the most heart-easing
things.

O may these joys be ripe before I die.

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Will not some say that I presumptuously Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace 'T were better far to hide my foolish face? That whining boyhood should with reverence bow

Ere the dread thunderbolt could reach?
How!

If I do hide myself, it sure shall be
In the very fane, the light of Poesy:
If I do fall, at least I will be laid
Beneath the silence of a poplar shade ;
And over me the grass shall be smooth
shaven ;

And there shall be a kind memorial graven.

280

But off, Despondence! miserable bane! They should not know thee, who athirst to gain

A noble end, are thirsty every hour.
What though I am not wealthy in the dower
Of spanning wisdom; though I do not know
The shiftings of the mighty winds that
blow

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And friendliness the nurse of mutual good. Hither and thither all the changing The hearty grasp that sends a pleasant

thoughts

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sonnet

Into the brain ere one can think upon it; 320 The silence when some rhymes are coming out;

And when they're come, the very pleasant

rout:

The message certain to be done to-morrow. 'Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow

Some precious book from out its snug

retreat,

To cluster round it when we next shall

meet.

Scarce can I scribble on; for lovely airs

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