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THE WORLD WITH US.

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

WORDSWORTH.

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CYTHNA.

SHE moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,
A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
One impulse of her being-in her lightness
Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,

Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue
To nourish some far desert; she did seem

Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,

Like the bright shade of some immortal dream

Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.

As mine own shadow was this child to me,
A second self, far dearer and more fair,
Which clothed in undissolving radiancy

All those steep paths which languor and despair
Of human things had made so dark and bare,
But which I trod alone, nor, till bereft

Of friends, and overcome by lonely care,
Knew I what solace for that loss was left,

Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.

Once she was dear, now she was all I had

To love in human life, this playmate sweet,
This child of twelve years old, so she was made
My sole associate, and her willing feet

Wandered with mine, where earth and ocean meet
Beyond the aërial mountains, whose vast cells

The unreposing billows ever beat.

Through forests wide and old, and lowing dells, Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells.

And warm and light I felt her clasping hand,
When twined in mine; she followed where I went
Through the lone paths of our immortal land,

It had no waste, but some memorial lent
Which strung me to my toil-some monument
Vital with mind--then Cythna by my side,
Until the bright and beaming hours were spent,
Would rest with looks entreating to abide
Too earnest, and too sweet ever to be denied.

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And soon I could not have refused her-thus
For ever, day and night; we two were ne'er

Parted, but when brief sleep divided us,
And when the pauses of the lulling air
Of noon beside the sea had made a lair
For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept;
And I kept watch over her slumbers there,
While, as the shifting visions over her swept,
Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.

SHELLEY.

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