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Because they once were sweet, shall lull What but mockery can they mean,

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IV

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear,

Till death like sleep might steal on

me,

And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

V

Some might lament that I were cold, As I, when this sweet day is gone, Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,

Insults with this untimely moan; They might lament-for I am one Whom men love not,―and yet regret, Unlike this day, which, when the

sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,

Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss

Of heaven with all its planets; the dull

ear

Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness Of the circumfluous waters, -every sphere

And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,

And every wind of the mute atmosphere, And every beast stretched in its rugged

cave,

And every bird lulled on its mossy bough, And every silver moth fresh from the grave,

Which is its cradle-ever from below Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in To be consumed within the purest glow

memory yet.

THE WOODMAN AND THE
NIGHTINGALE

A WOODMAN whose rough heart was out of tune

(I think such hearts yet never came to good)

Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody;— And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky Struggling with darkness- -as a tuberose Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Of one serene and unapproached star, As if it were a lamp of earthly light, Unconscious, as some human lovers are,

Itself how low, how high beyond all height

The heaven where it would perish!and every form

That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm Girt as with an interminable zone, Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion Out of their dreams; harmony became love

Like clouds above the flower from which In every soul but one.

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In this sweet forest, from the golden And so this man returned with axe and

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At evening close from killing the tall The world is full of Woodmen who expel

treen,

The soul of whom by nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever

green

The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,

Chequering the sunlight of the blue

serene

With jagged leaves, -and from the

forest tops

Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,

And vex the nightingales in every dell.

MARENGHI1

LET those who pine in pride or in

revenge,

Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,

Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping Or barter wrong for wrong, until the

oft

Fast showers of aërial water drops

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and

soft,

exchange

Ruins the merchants of such thriftless

trade,

Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn

Nature's pure tears which have no bitter- Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.

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And thou in painting didst transcribe For when by sound of trumpet was

all taught

By loftiest meditations; marble knew The sculptor's fearless soul-and as he wrought,

The grace of his own power and

freedom grew.

declared

A price upon his life, and there was

set

A penalty of blood on all who shared
So much of water with him as might

wet

And more than all, heroic, just, sublime, His lips, which speech divided not-he Thou wert among the false-was this

thy crime?

IX

went

Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

XIII

Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the Amid the mountains, like a hunted

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