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I know not how others saw her,
But to me she was wholly fair,
And the light of the heaven she came from
Still lingered and gleamed in her hair;
For it was as wavy and golden,

And as many changes took,
As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples
On the yellow bed of a brook.

To what can I liken her smiling

Upon me, her kneeling lover,

How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,

And dimpled her wholly over,
Till her outstretched hands smiled also,
And I almost seemed to see
The very heart of her mother

Sending sun through her veins to me !

She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,

And it hardly seemed a day,
When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away;
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari
But loosed the hampering strings,
And when they had opened her cage-door,
My little bird used her wings.

But they left in her stead a changeling,
A little angel child,

That seems like her bud in full blossom,
And smiles as she never smiled:
When I wake in the morning, I see it
Where she always used to lie,
And I feel as weak as a violet

Alone 'neath the awful sky.

As weak, yet as trustful also;

For the whole year long I see All the wonders of faithful Nature Still worked for the love of me; Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, Rain falls, suns rise and set, Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet.

This child is not mine as the first was,

I cannot sing it to rest,

I cannot lift it up fatherly

And bliss it upon my breast:

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle
And sits in my little one's chair,

And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.

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What wonder if those palms were all too They noted down their fetters, link by hard

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link;

Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink;

Rude was their score, as suits unlettered

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'T was close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man.

V

O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no

seed !

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And if it be a dream,

If the great Future be the little Past 'Neath a new mask, which drops and shows at last

The same weird, mocking face to balk and blast,

Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the theme,

And the Tyrtæan harp

Loves notes more resolute and sharp, Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and fast:

Such visions are of morning,

Theirs is no vague forewarning, The dreams which nations dream come true, And shape the world anew;

If this be a sleep,

Make it long, make it deep,

O Father, who sendest the harvests men reap!
While Labor so sleepeth,
His sorrow is gone,
No longer he weepeth,
But smileth and steepeth

His thoughts in the dawn;
He heareth Hope yonder

Rain, lark-like, her fancies,
His dreaming hands wander

Mid heart's-ease and pansies;
""T is a dream! 'T is a vision !"
Shrieks Mammon aghast;
"The day's broad derision
Will chase it at last;
Ye are mad, ye have taken
A slumbering kraken

For firm land of the Past!"
Ah! if he awaken,

God shield us all then,
If this dream rudely shaken
Shall cheat him again!

IX

Since first I heard our North-wind blow, Since first I saw Atlantic throw

On our grim rocks his thunderous snow,

I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy The rattle of thy shield at Marathon Did with a Grecian joy Through all my pulses run;

But I have learned to love thee now

Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow, A maiden mild and undefiled

As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could reave and steal,

So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel;

But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before,

Like her who bore the world's redeeming Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our

child;

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lives and faiths to Thor.

Law is holy: ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine

Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends?

Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan,

Ere he filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man? For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole

Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul?

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