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VII The Place of Pools
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VII
The Place of Pools

Here, though bluff weeds their mauves and purples flaunt,

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And daylight spreads glad gold on grass and moss,
Is something sinister, the soul's at loss
To understand or see as is its wont:
Morosely old, a something, grim and gaunt,
Stalks there invisible, as stalks across
A ruin of legend, with gray hair atoss,
Vague Superstition, making it his haunt.
Above the sombre pools the gypsy Fall
Leans, wild of look. ... Is that a crimson bough,
Staining the water? or a blur of blood?
That, as a mind a memory may recall,
The place reshapes within itself somehow,
Pointing a crime long buried in the flood.