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Ballads for the Times

(Now first collected,) Geraldine, A Modern Pyramid, Bartenus, A Thousand Lines, and other poems. By Martin F. Tupper. A new Edition, enlarged and revised

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Swiftly the dragon-maid unroll'd
The burnish'd strength of each sinewy fold,
And round the old oak trunk with toil
Hath wound and trail'd each tortuous coil,
Then with one crush hath splitten and broke
To the hollow black heart of the sear old oak!