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While, through thy lips and face, arise
The melodies from out thy breast;
She sits and sings,
With folded wings

And white arms crost,
"Weep not for bygone things,
They are not lost:

The beauty which the summer time
O'er thine opening spirit shed,
The forest oracles sublime

That filled thy soul with joyous dread,
The scent of every smallest flower
That made thy heart sweet for an
hour,

Yea, every holy influence,
Flowing to thee, thou knewest not
whence,

In thine eyes to-day is seen,
Fresh as it hath ever been;
Promptings of Nature, beckonings
sweet,

Whatever led thy childish feet,
Still will linger unawares
The guiders of thy silver hairs;
Every look and every word
Which thou givest forth to-day,
Tell of the singing of the bird
Whose music stilled thy boyish play."

Thy voice is like a fountain,
Twinkling up in sharp starlight,
When the moon behind the mountain
Dims the low East with faintest white,
Ever darkling,
Ever sparkling,

We know not if 't is dark or bright; But, when the great moon hath rolled round,

And, sudden-slow, its solemn power Grows from behind its black, clear-edged bound,

No spot of dark the fountain keepeth, But, swift as opening eyelids, leapeth Into a waving silver flower.

THE MOON.

My soul was like the sea, Before the moon was made, Moaning in vague immensity, Of its own strength afraid, Unrestful and unstaid. Through every rift it foamed in vain, About its earthly prison, Seeking some unknown thing in pain, And sinking restless back again,

For yet no moon had risen:
Its only voice a vast dumb moan,
Of utterless anguish speaking,
It lay unhopefully alone,

And lived but in an aimless seeking.

So was my soul; but when 't was full
Of unrest to o'erloading,
A voice of something beautiful

Whispered a dim foreboding,
And yet so soft, so sweet, so low,
It had not more of joy than woe;
And, as the sea doth oft lie still,

Making its waters meet,

As if by an unconscious will,

For the moon's silver feet,
So lay my soul within mine eyes
When thou, its guardian moon, didst rise.

And now, howe'er its waves above
May toss and seem uneaseful,
One strong, eternal law of Love,

With guidance sure and peaceful,
As calin and natural as breath,
Moves its great deeps through life and
death.

REMEMBERED MUSIC.

A FRAGMENT.

THICK-RUSHING, like an ocean vast
The notes crowd heavily and fast
Of bisons the far prairie shaking,
As surfs, one plunging while the last
Draws seaward from its foamy breaking.
Or in low murmurs they began,

Rising and rising momently,
A fitful breeze, until they ran
As o'er a harp Æolian

Up to a sudden ecstasy.

And then, like minute-drops of rain
Ringing in water silverly,
They lingering dropped and dropped
again,

Till it was almost like a pain

To listen when the next would be.

SONG.

TO M. L.

A LILY thou wast when I saw thee first,
A lily-bud not opened quite,
That hourly grew more pure and
white,

By morning, and noontide, and evening | As if thy natal stars were flowers

nursed:

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That shook their seeds round thee on earth.

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Of human soul, unwaning and undimming,

To cheer and guide the mariner at night.

II.

But now the Poet is an empty rhymer

Who lies with idle elbow on the grass,

Who dimly hearest voices call on thee, Whose soul is overfilled with mighty throngings

Of love, and fear, and glorious agony, Thou of the toil-strung hands and iron sinews

And soul by Mother Earth with freedom fed,

And fits his singing, like a cunning In whom the hero-spirit yet continues,

timer,

To all men's prides and fancies as they pass.

Not his the song, which, in its metre holy,

Chimes with the music of the eternal stars, Humbling the tyrant, lifting up the lowly,

And sending sun through the soul's prison-bars. Maker no

rather,

more, -O no! unmaker

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The old free nature is not chained or

dead,

Arouse let thy soul break in musicthunder,

Let loose the ocean that is in thee pent,

Pour forth thy hope, thy fear, thy love, thy wonder,

And tell the age what all its signs have meant.

Where'er thy wildered crowd of brethren jostles,

Where'er there lingers but a shadow of

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And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurk- As when a sudden burst of rattling

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Around the centre fixed of Destiny, Where the encircling soul serene o'erarches

The moving globe of being like a sky; Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer

Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,

thunder

Shatters the blueness of a sky serene.

THE FATHERLAND.

WHERE is the true man's fatherland?
Is it where he by chance is born?
Doth not the yearning spirit scorn
In such scant borders to be spanned?
O yes! his fatherland must be
As the blue heaven wide and free!

Who doth not hold his soul's own free- Is it alone where freedom is,

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