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Poems and dramas of George Cabot Lodge

Lodge, George Cabot (1873-1909)

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VOLUME I
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VOLUME II
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THE GREAT ADVENTURE
  
[dedication]
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I LIFE
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II LOVE
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III DEATH
  
TRUMBULL STICKNEY OCTOBER 11TH MCMIV
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[I The House of Life has many mansions, where]
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[II “He sought, believed, dared, found and bore away]
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[III “Nothing is spared,” he said, “nothing is lost]
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[IV “That we, however least, however less]
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[V He felt the blind, lost loneliness increase]
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[VI He said: “What death leaves derelict is dead]
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[VII “We serve no God, nor in the retinue]
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[VIII I well remember how one yesterday]
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[IX “At least,” he said, “we spent with Socrates]
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[X He said: “We are the Great Adventurers,]
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[XI Above his heart the rose is red]
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[XII We knew he lived alone with loneliness]
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[XIII In silence, solitude and stern surmise]
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[XIV At last the light leaped in his patient eyes]
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[XV With life and lips he said tremendous things]
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[XVI Times were when, reeling on his eminence]
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[XVII I saw that day in his dead eyes]
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[XVIII There moved a Presence always by his side]
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[XIX Because for some tremendous cause he chose]
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[XX All thro' the night most strange it was to see]
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[XXI The stately silence, the perpetual peace]
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[XXII We said no word of all men use to say]
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[XXIII We bore the chill, persistent dread]
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XXIV DAYS
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[XXV O Memory, Lord of broken and broadcast]
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[XXVI It is not that we loved him, as in sooth]
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THE SOUL'S INHERITANCE AND OTHER POEMS
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HERAKLES

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5

[I
Pride, power and substance of created things]

Pride, power and substance of created things,
Gross, vital element of all that is,
Womb of interminable pregnancies,
Perennial source of earth's resurgent Springs—
O Life! crude matrix that forever clings
To thought's clear diamond, dark chrysalis
Big with prodigious birth, unsunned abyss
Headlong beneath the soul's Icarian wings!
When, as my peers before me, I shall fall
Shattered with light, and, lost beyond recall,
Mix and resolve in thy creative slime,—
Thence shall I rise in endless avatars,
And still once more, for Truth's eternal stars,
Leap from the cloud-capped battlements of Time!
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