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And She cried: 'Ply the oar,
Put off gaily from shore!'
As she spoke bolts of death,

Mixed with hail, specked their path
O'er the sea.

And from isle, tower, and rock,

The blue beacon-cloud broke,
Though dumb in the blast,

From the lee.

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The red cannon flashed fast.

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Is withdrawn and uplifted,
Sunk, shattered, and shifted,
To and fro.

In the court of the fortress,
Beside the pale portress,

Like a bloodhound well beaten
The bridegroom stands, eaten
By shame:

On the topmost watch turret,
As a death-boding spirit,
Stands the gray tyrant father,
To his voice the mad weather
Seems tame;

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She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove;

A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone

Half-hidden from the eye!

--Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and oh!

The difference to me!

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William Wordsworth.

CXCIII

ODE TO PSYCHE.

O Goddess, hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung,
Even into thine own soft-conchèd ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

The winged Psyche with awakened eyes?

I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,

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Saw two fair creatures, couchèd side by side

In deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:

'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embracèd, and their pinions too;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The wingèd Boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!

O latest-born and loveliest vision far

Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-regioned star!
Or Vesper, amorous glowworm of the sky;.
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor altar heaped with flowers;

Nor Virgin-choir to make delicious moan

Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming ;

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retired
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.

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ΙΟ

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet

From swingèd censer teeming :

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Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

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In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees

Fledge the wild-ridgèd mountains steep by steep;

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And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,

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With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,

Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,

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John Keats.

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!

CXCIV

THE SUNFLOWER.

Ah Sunflower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go.

William Blake.

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CXCV

REGRETS.

Too true it is, my time of power was spent
In idly watering weeds of casual growth,
That wasted energy to desperate sloth
Declined, and fond self-seeking discontent;
That the huge debt for all that Nature lent
I sought to cancel, and was nothing loth
To deem myself an outlaw, severed both
From duty and from hope,-yea, blindly sent
Without an errand, where I would to stray :-
Too true it is, that, knowing now my state,
I weakly mourn the sin I ought to hate,
Nor love the law I yet would fain obey:
But true it is, above all law and fate
Is Faith, abiding the appointed day.

CXCVI

Hartley Coleridge.

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TO A LOFTY BEAUTY, FROM her poor kINSMAN.
Fair maid, had I not heard thy baby cries,
Nor seen thy girlish, sweet vicissitude,
Thy mazy motions, striving to elude,
Yet wooing still a parent's watchful eyes,
Thy humours, many as the opal's dyes,

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And lovely all;-methinks thy scornful mood,

And bearing high of stately womanhood,-
Thy brow, where Beauty sits to tyrannize
O'er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee;
For never sure was seen a royal bride,
Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride—
My very thoughts would tremble to be near thee:
But when I see thee at thy father's side,

ΙΟ

Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee.
Hartley Coleridge.

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