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The songs of maidens pressing with white | But universal Nature watches theirs: Such strength is won by love of human kind.

feet

The vintage on thine altars poured no

more,

The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath

Dim grapevine bowers, whose rosy bunches press

Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unpaled

By thoughts of thy brute lust, hive-like hum

Of peaceful commonwealths, where burnt Toil

Not that I feel that hunger after fame, Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with;

But that the memory of noble deeds Cries shame upon the idle and the vile, And keeps the heart of Man forever up the To the heroic level of old time. To be forgot at first is little pain sun-To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men ; | But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without,

Reaps for itself the rich earth made its

Own

By its own labor, lightened with glad
hymns

To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts
Would cope with as a spark with the

vast sea,

Even the spirit of free love and peace, Duty's sure recompense through life and death,

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Which, having been or not, would never change

The lightest pulse of fate, this is indeed

A cup of bitterness the worst to taste,
And this thy heart shall empty to the
dregs.

Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus,
And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find
Oblivion far lonelier than this peak,
Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it
much

That I should brave thee, miserable god!
But I have braved a mightier than thou,
Even the tempting of this soaring heart,
Which might have made me, scarcely
less than thou,

A god among my brethren weak and
blind,

Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing
To be down-trodden into darkness soon.
But now I am above thee, for thou art
The bungling workmanship of fear, the
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That awes the swart Barbarian; but I
Am what myself have made, -a nature
wise

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Thou and all strength shall crumble, | Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the except Love,

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truth

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While from my peak of suffering I look down,

Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope

The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face,

Shone all around with love, no man shall look

But straightway like a god he is uplift Unto the throne long empty for his sake, And clearly oft foreshadowed in wide dreams

By his free inward nature, which nor thou,

Nor any anarch after thee, can bind From working its great doom, — now,

now set free This essence, not to die, but to become

Part of that awful Presence which doth | Loneliest, save me, of all created things,

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For wisdom is meek sorrow's patient child,

And empire over self, and all the deep Strong charities that make men seem like gods;

And love, that makes them be gods, from her breasts

Sucks in the milk that makes mankind one blood.

Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems,

Having two faces, as some images Are carved, of foolish gods; one face is ill;

But one heart lies beneath, and that is good,

As are all hearts, when we explore their depths.

Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type

Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart

Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears lifelong With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left;

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Then King Admetus, one who had

Pure taste by right divine,
Decreed his singing not too bad
To hear between the cups of wine:

And so, well pleased with being soothed
Into a sweet half-sleep,

Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, And made him viceroy o'er his sheep.

His words were simple words enough,

And yet he used them so,
That what in other mouths was rough
In his seemed musical and low.

Men called him but a shiftless youth,
In whom no good they saw;
And yet, unwittingly, in truth,
They made his careless words their law.

They knew not how he learned at all,
For idly, hour by hour,

Earth seemed more sweet More full of love, because

And day by day more holy

Each spot where he had t Till after-poets only knew Their first-born brother as a go

THE TOKEN.

Ir is a mere wild rosebud,

Quite sallow now, and dry,
Yet there's something wondrous in it,
Some gleams of days gone by,
Dear sights and sounds that are to me
The very moons of memory,
And stir my heart's blood far below
Its short-lived waves of joy and woe.

Lips must fade and roses wither,
All sweet times be o'er;
They only smile, and, murmuring
"Thither!"

Stay with us no more:
And yet ofttimes a look or smile,
Years after from the dark will start,
Forgotten in a kiss's while,
And flash across the trembling heart.

Thou hast given me many roses,
But never one, like this,
O'erfloods both sense and spirit

With such a deep, wild bliss;
We must have instincts that glean up
Sparse drops of this life in the cup,
Whose taste shall give us all that we
Can prove of immortality.

Earth's stablest things are shadows,
And, in the life to come,

He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, Haply some chance-saved trifle

Or mused upon a common flower.

It seemed the loveliness of things
Did teach him all their use,
For, in mere weeds, and stones,
springs,

He found a healing power profuse.

and

Men granted that his speech was wise,
But, when a glance they caught
Of his slim grace and woman's eyes,
They laughed, and called him good-for-
naught.

Yet after he was dead and gone,

And e'en his memory dim,

May tell of this old home:

As now sometimes we seem to find,
In a dark crevice of the mind,
Some relic, which, long pondered o'er,
Hints faintly at a life before.

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God scatters love on every side
Freely among his children all,
And always hearts are lying open wide,
Wherein some grains may fall.

There is no wind but soweth seeds
Of a more true and open life,

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God wills, man hopes: in common souls

Hope is but vague and undefined,

Which burst, unlooked for, into high- Till from the poet's tongue the message

souled deeds,

With wayside beauty rife.

We find within these souls of ours Some wild germs of a higher birth, Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers

Whose fragrance fills the earth.

Within the hearts of all men lie
These promises of wider bliss,

Which blossom into hopes that cannot die,

In sunny hours like this.

All that hath been majestical
In life or death, since time began,
Is native in the simple heart of all,
The angel heart of man.

And thus, among the untaught poor, Great deeds and feelings find a home, That cast in shadow all the golden lore Of classic Greece and Rome.

O, mighty brother-soul of man,
Where'er thou art, in low or high,

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