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A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness.
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Be thou, spirit fierce,

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Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

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Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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TO A SKYLARK

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

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In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven,

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen,

but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

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The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 30

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

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Like a high-born maiden

In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: 45

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from

the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged

thieves :

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus Hymeneal,

Or triumphal chaunt.

Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

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What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? 75

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

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Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 85

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 90

Yet if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear,

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

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Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 105

THE INDIAN SERENADE

I ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright,
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream
The champak-odours fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint

It dies upon her heart,

As I must die on thine,

Beloved as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
Oh press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!

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