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XVIII.

FULL many noble friends my soul hath known,
Women and men, who in my memory

Have sown such beauty as can never die ;
And many times, when I seem all alone,
Within my heart I call up, one by one,

The joys I shared with them, the unlaced hours

Of laughing thoughts, that came and went like flowers, Or higher argument, Apollo's own:

Those listening eyes that gave nobility

To humblest verses writ and read for love,

Those burning words of high democracy,

Those doubts that through the vague abyss would rove And lean o'er chasms that took away the breath,When I forget them, may it be in death!

XIX.

How oft do I live o'er that blissful time

When first I found thy love within my breast,
Like the first violet in April's prime,

Born a full flower, more fair than all the rest,
And richer with the early dew of rhyme!
Till then, I felt my heart was but a guest
In the broad world, but now there is no clime
Where it as rightful sovereign may not rest:
Wherever Nature even a weed doth plant,
There it the fulness of delight may win;
No dead or living thing will let it want,
None but whose heart will freely take it in;

For Love hath made it now wise Nature's child,

And from her arms it cannot be exiled.

XX.

SLOW-OPENING flower of the summer morn,
Blithe quietness of sun-delighted dew, -
Green inland oceans of unrippling corn, ·

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Deep thoughtfulness of never-wrinkled blue,
Whose high, eternal silence seemeth born

For the lone moon and stars to wander through, –

Sunset, and all the wreaths by Nature worn,

And momently thrown by for beauties new,

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My heart grows fragrant while on you I look,
And murmurs to itself, and feels at ease,
And trembles, like a sunny birch-tree shook
In rustling sparkles by a warm noon-breeze;
Yet, when I see my Love, my heart runs o'er
With sympathies and strengths undreamed before.

Pained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven:

Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons,

And we till noonday bar the splendor out,
Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts,
Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice,

And be content, though clad with angel-wings,
Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch,
In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts?
O, rather, like the sky-lark, soar and sing,
And let our gushing songs befit the dawn
And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew

Brimming the chalice of each full-blown hope,
Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day!

Never had poets such high call before,

Never can poets hope for higher one,

And, if they be but faithful to their trust,

Earth will remember them with love and joy,
And, O, far better, God will not forget.

For he who settles Freedom's principles

Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny;

Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart, And his mere word makes despots tremble more

XXII.

THE SAME, CONTINUED.

ONCE hardly in a cycle blossometh

A flower-like soul ripe with the seeds of song,
A spirit fore-ordained to cope with wrong,
Whose divine thoughts are natural as breath,
Who the old Darkness thickly scattereth

With starry words, that shoot prevailing light
Into the deeps, and wither, with the blight
Of serene Truth, the coward heart of Death:
Woe, if such spirit thwart its errand high,
And mock with lies the longing soul of man!
Yet one age longer must true Culture lie,

Soothing her bitter fetters as she can,
Until new messages of love outstart

At the next beating of the infinite Heart.

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