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Round many a rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splintered pinnacle;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,
Huge as the tower which builders
vain

Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
The rocky summit, split and rent,
Formed turret, dome, or battlement,
Or seemed fantastically set
With cupola or minaret,

Wild crests as pagod ever decked
Or mosque of Eastern architect.
Nor were these earth-born castles
bare,

Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed,

Far o'er the unfathomable glade,
All twinkling with the dewdrops

sheen,

The brier-rose fell in streainers green; And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes,

Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs.

Boon nature scattered, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain's child,

Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower;

Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side,

Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain

The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath,

Gray birch and aspen wept beneath;
Aloft the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
His shattered trunk, and frequent
flung,

Where seemed the cliffs to meet on

high,

His boughs athwart the narrowed sky.

Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,

Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced,

The wanderer's eye could barely view The summer heaven's delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might

seem

The scenery of a fairy dream.

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[From The Lay of the Last Minstrel.]
MELROSE ABBEY BY MOON-
LIGHT.

IF thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,

Go visit it by the pale moonlight; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray. When the broken arches are black in night,

And each shafted oriel glimmers white;

When the cold light's uncertain shower

Streams on the ruined central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately,

Seem framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery,
And the scrolls that teach thee to
live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead

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Whose wishes, soon as granted fly;

It liveth not in fierce desire.

With dead desire it doth not die; It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,

In body and in soul can bind.

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