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BREVIA.
KEEPING A ROSE'S COMPANY.—A PERSIAN FABLE.
A traveler, toiling on a weary way,Found in his path a piece of fragrant clay.
“This seems but common earth,” says he, “but how
Delightful!—it is full of sweetness now!
Whence is thy fragrance?” From the clay there grows
A voice: “I have been very near a rose.”
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FOR ---.
If poor the words I breathe you,Oh, magic be their power!—
What lovely wreaths shall wreathe you
If wishes come to flower!
POPULARITY AND FAME.
I.
Post-haste one flies—at noisy inns she gossips on the way,Where staring boys applaud and shout, and men in liveries gay:
Her business is in yonder town, her journey lasts to-day.
II.
One travels slow—at first her inns are houses for the poor;85
To the world's end she journeys on, her road is evermore.
WINTER SUNSET.
The winter day is done:From early morn blown over restless crowds
Of slow-advancing clouds,
With chilly, azure-lighted intervals,
Now—large and low, beneath their lifted vail—
Breathlessly bright! the sun
Against the eastern distance falls,
Reddening the far forests, empty and cold,
Whence the dumb river draws its icy trail
Through valley-farms the barren hills enfold,
And on the slope, under the spark-like spire,
The village windows shiver, all afire!
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FOR SCULPTURE.
Lo, sleep binds over the weary angel Life,Whose globe, his care, turns idly from his hand,
With all its continents of toil and strife,
With all its tossing seas and shifting sand!
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TASKING THE MUSE.
Thy housekeeper the goddess will not be—Make task-work for the Muse and she will fly;
Her gift of love is in her liberty:
But, close thy door—then she is in her sky!
WITH SOME OLD LETTERS.
Old lips that speak no more I hear;Old vanish'd faces, brightening, come;
Old footsteps echo, strangely near,
From happy doors of Home!—
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Beat through Time's veins again in light;
I see warm hands, from loving hearts
Extended, while they write!
A DECEMBER NIGHT.
Listen!—the wind is crying, like a loonOn some far water, and the rising moon
Stands breathless on the snow! That wind!—it seems
A lost soul crying out in holy dreams,
The cry of some long unappeased despair
That has no human tongue—a soul in the air!
The flame drops into ember-breathing gloom;
Glimmers of shadow walk around the room,
Great shapeless shapes, a shuddering moment plain,
As the flame drops, then vanishing again!
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NEW FLIGHTS.
How glad yet sad is he whom gods have given,With wings that lift him ever toward their Heaven,
The sight that looks beyond the farthest star
And sees, each higher flight, the Heaven more far!
FORMER SELF.
Life's task-work comes, after our youthful dreams,And we forget in drudgeries of earth
Those bodily wings that took our dreams to Heaven,
Now heavy-drooping, soil'd, invisible,
Unlifted and unconscious by our sides.
Yet there are times when we remember them,
And vaguely feel their old and buoyant power
And dream its restoration suddenly,
But for a moment only—dropping down
We recognize the vanish'd angelhood,
Care-burden'd men whose footprints pass in dust.
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