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8.

How the light, light love, he has wings to fly

At suspicion of a bond:

How my wisdom has bidden your pleasure good-bye, Which will turn up next in a laughing eye,

And why should you look beyond?

V.

ON THE CLIFF.

1.

I LEANED on the turf,

I looked at a rock

Left dry by the surf;

For the turf, to call it grass were to mock: Dead to the roots, so deep was done

The work of the summer sun.

2.

And the rock lay flat

As an anvil's face:

No iron like that!

Baked dry; of a weed, of a shell, no trace:

Sunshine outside, but ice at the core,

Death's altar by the lone shore.

3.

On the turf, sprang gay

With his films of blue,

No cricket, I'll say,

But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned too, The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight,

Real fairy, with wings all right.

4.

On the rock, they scorch

Like a drop of fire

From a brandished torch,

Fell two red fans of a butterfly:

No turf, no rock, in their ugly stead,

See, wonderful blue and red!

Is it not so

5.

With the minds of men?

The level and low,

The burnt and bare, in themselves; but then

With such a blue and red grace, not theirs, Love settling unawares!

2

VI.

UNDER THE CLIFF.

1.

"STILL ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or no?
Which needs the other's office, thou or I?
Dost want to be disburthened of a woe,

And can, in truth, my voice untie

Its links, and let it go?

2.

"Art thou a dumb, wronged thing that would be righted, Intrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear.

No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith, requited

With falsehood, love, at last aware

Of scorn, — hopes, early blighted,

3.

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"We have them; but I know not any tone

So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow:

Dost think men would go mad without a moan,
If they knew any way to borrow

A pathos like thy own?

4.

"Which sigh wouldst mock, of all the sighs? The one So long escaping from lips starved and blue, That lasts while on her pallet-bed the nun

Stretches her length; her foot comes through The straw she shivers on;

5.

"You had not thought she was so tall and spent, Her shrunk lids open, her lean fingers shut Close, close, their sharp and livid nails indent

The clammy palm; then all is mute: That way, the spirit went.

6.

"Or wouldst thou rather that I understand

Thy will to help me?—like the dog I found

Once, pacing sad this solitary strand,

Who would not take my food, poor

hound,

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All this, and more, comes from some young man's pride

Of power to see, in failure and mistake,

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Relinquishment, disgrace, on every side,

Merely examples for his sake,

Helps to his path untried:

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