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Type of long-suffering power! Even in my gayest hour, Thou 'dst still my tongue, and send my spirit far,

To wander in a labyrinth of thought; For thou hast waged with Time unceasing war,

And out of pain hast strength and beauty brought.

Thou amidst storms and tempests hadst thy birth,

Upon these bleak and scantly-sheltering rocks,

Nor much save storm and wrath hast known on earth;

Yet nobly hast thou bode the fiercest shocks.

That Circumstance

patient Worth.

can pour on

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But then came autumn, when Thy dry and tattered leaves fell dead;

And sadly on the gale

Thou drop'dst them one by

one

Drop'dst them, with a low, sad wail,

On the cold, unfeeling stone. Next Winter seized thee in his iron grasp,

And shook thy bruised and straining form;

Or locked thee in his icicle's cold clasp,

And piled upon thy head the shorn cloud's snowy fleece. Wert thou not joyful, in this bitter

storm,

That the green honors, which erst decked thy head,

Sage Autumn's slow decay, had mildly shed?

Else, with their weight, they'd given thy ills increase,

And dragged thee helpless from thy uptorn bed.

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Nor 'neath life's ruthless tempests
bend:

But calmly stand like thee,
Though wrath and storm shake

me,

Though vernal hopes in yellow
Autumn end,

And strong in truth work out my
destiny.

Type of long-suffering Power!
Type of unbending Will!
Strong in the tempest's hour,
Bright when the storm is still;
Rising from every contest with an
unbroken heart,

Strengthened by every struggle,
emblem of might thou art!
Sign of what man can compass, spite
of an adverse state,

Still, from thy rocky summit, teach us to war with fate!

AWAKING OF THE POETICAL
FACULTY.

ALL day I heard a humming in my

I

ears,

A buzz of many voices, and a throng Of swarming numbers, passing with a song

Measured and stately as the rolling spheres'.

saw the sudden light of lifted spears,

Slanted at once against some mon

ster wrong;

And then a fluttering scarf which might belong

To some sweet maiden in her morn of years.

I felt the chilling damp of sunless glades,

Horrid with gloom; anon, the breath of May

Was blown around me, and the lulling play

Of

dripping fountains.

lights and shades,

Yet the

The waving scarfs, the battle's grand parades,

Seemed but vague shadows of that wondrous lay.

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So thou, the sun whence all my Of bells that murmur of my coming light doth flow –

knell,

And all things seem a show and

mockery

Life, and life's actions, noise and

vanity;

I ask my mournful heart if it can tell If all be truth which I protest to thee:

And my heart answers, solemnly, "Tis well."

I HAVE been mounted on life's topmost wave,

Until my forehead kissed the daz

zling cloud;

But, ah! my treacherous heart doth ever fail

To ratify the sentence of my mind; For when conviction strikes me to the core,

I swear I love thee fondlier than before;

And were I now all free and unconfined,

Loose as the action of the shoreless wind,

My slavish heart would sigh for bonds once more.

I have been dashed beneath the AH! let me live on memories of

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old,

The precious relics I have set aside From life's poor venture; things

that yet abide

My ill-paid labor, shining, like pure gold,

Amid the dross of cheated hopes whose hold

Dropped at the touch of action.
Let me glide

Down the smooth past, review
that day of pride

When each to each our mutual passion told

When love grew frenzy in thy blazing eye,

Fear shone heroic, caution quailed before

My hot, resistless kisses - when we bore

Time, conscience, destiny, down, down for aye,

Beneath victorious love, and thou didst cry,

"Strike, God! life's cup is running o'er and o'er

DIRGE FOR A SOLDIER.

CLOSE his eyes; his work is done!
What to him is friend or foeman,
Rise of moon, or set of sun,

Hand of man, or kiss of woman?
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he cannot know:
Lay him low!

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