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Metrical essays

on subjects of history and imagination. By Charles Swain
 
 

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160

THE STRANGER.

There is regality on his stern brow,
A mental grandeur in his gloomy eye,
Denoting thoughts—feelings that may not die—
Yet blight the melancholy heart to know:
O! there must live some fearful cause of woe
To stoop that lofty mind—that spirit high,
And give to solitude and misery
One formed to grace the all Love may bestow.
I have marked tears—the bitterest which flow—
Heard, too, the long repress'd corroding sigh
From him, who when the madden'd tempests blow
Will their fierce might—their deadly rage—defy!
But who the soul in its dark depths may show?—
Man to himself is still a mystery!