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Lucile

By Owen Meredith [i.e. E. R. B. Lytton]
  

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XX.

Hail, virginal daughter of cold Espingo!
Hail, Naiad, whose realm is the cloud and the snow!
For o'er thee the angels have whiten'd their wings,
And the thirst of the seraphs is quench'd at thy springs.
What hand hath, in heaven, upheld thine expanse?
When the breath of creation first fashion'd fair France,
Did the Spirit of Ill, in his downthrow appalling,
Bruise the world, and thus hollow thy basin while falling?
Ere the mammoth was born hath some monster unnamed
The base of thy mountainous pedestal framed?

104

And later, when Power to Beauty was wed,
Did some delicate fairy embroider thy bed
With the fragile valerian and wild columbine?