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The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan

In Two Volumes. With a Portrait

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[Thou Fame! who makest of the singer's Life]

Thou Fame! who makest of the singer's Life,
Faint with the sweetness of its own desire,
A statue of Narcissus, still and fair
For evermore, and bending evermore
Over its beauteous image mirrorëd
In the swift current of our human days,
Eternally in act to clasp and kiss!
O Fame, teach thou this flesh and blood to love
Some beauteous counterpart, and while it bends,
Tremulously gazing on the image, blow
Thy trump aloud, and freeze it into stone!