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Songs of Doubt and Dream (Poems)

Fawcett, Edgar (1847-1904)

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[section]
  
THE BARTHOLDI STATUE.
  
EVOLUTION.
  
PEACE AND WAR.
  
A NINETEENTH CENTURY KING.
  
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON.
  
MARRIED BOHEMIANS.
  
A RETROSPECT.
  
NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S WIFE.
  
AT A WINDOW.
  
BIRD-LANGUAGE.
  
A CITY ECLOGUE.
  
MEMORIAL VERSES.
  
IN THE YEAR TEN THOUSAND.
  
A SLAYER OF POETS.
  
PAUL AVENEL.
  
THE ASPIRER.
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REVERIES.
 1. 
I.—A Tulip-Bulb.
 2. 
[II. O swan, what memories rarely sweet]
 3. 
III.—In Mid-Ocean.
 4. 
[IV. While the broad night above me broods]
 5. 
V.—A Squirrel.
 6. 
[VI. Dear lavish blossoms that light the Junes]
 8. 
[VIII. Somehow I have lived without you]
 9. 
[IX. I feel the huge dim city round me lie]
 10. 
X.—To a Reformer.
 11. 
XI.—Grass.
  
QUEEN CHRISTINA AND DE LIAR.
  
CAPRICE.
  
SUB ROSÂ.
  
ANACREONTIC.
  
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.
  
JACYNTH.
  
AFRICAN BALLAD.
  
A DIALOGUE.
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LYRIC INTERLUDE.
 1. 
[I. You tell me, friend, that seeing how fate has said]
 2. 
II.—A Graveyard.
 3. 
III.—In Poverty.
 4. 
IV.—Low Life.
 5. 
[V. The year was dying, the wind went sighing]
 6. 
VI.—To E. N. C.
 7. 
[VII. The clouded east was fiery-creased where the late moon mounted up]
 8. 
VIII.—A Blackberry Idyl.
 9. 
IX.—Pigeons.
 10. 
X.—A Dead World.
 11. 
XI.—For a Book of Light Rhymes.
 12. 
XII.—Environment.
 13. 
XIII.—Death's Plaint.
 14. 
[XIV. Ho! for Dreamland's happy harbors]
 15. 
XV.—Meteors.
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HOW A QUEEN LOVED.
 1. 
I.
 2. 
II.
 3. 
III.
  
THE TEARS OF TULLIA.
  
THE DYING ACTOR.
  
VICISSITUDE.
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TWO SCENES IN THE LIFE OF BEAU BRUMMELL.
 1. 
I. 1810.
 2. 
II. 1836.
  
THARAK AND THE LION.
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INTERMEZZO.
 1. 
I.—The Wood-Turtle.
 2. 
[II. Above the porch, full in dawn's rosy view]
 3. 
[III. Shadows hung dense on the burnished lake]
 4. 
IV.—Asters and Goldenrods.
 5. 
[V. All day the reapers on the hill]
 6. 
VI.—To a Friend Who Slept Ill.
 7. 
[VII. How long ere the blast that is nipping and bitter]
 8. 
VIII.—Babes in the Wood.
 9. 
IX.—Aquarelle.
 10. 
[X. How sad, in this wide airy glade]
 11. 
XI.—Cradle-Song.
 12. 
[XII. They led the pale Christ through the mouthing throng]
 13. 
[XIII. How marvellously all the deeps of night]
 14. 
XIV.—To a Literary Fop.
 15. 
[XV. Think not that you may calmly tread]
 16. 
[XVI. An old man mused, amid twilight's haze]
 17. 
[XVII. I saw in dreams a system of dead worlds]
  
THE CARISFORT CURSE.
  
AGNOSTIC AND CHRISTIAN.
  
KATE ROMNEY.
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INCONGRUITIES.
 1. 
I.
 2. 
II.
  
THE MILKY WAY.
  
HISTORY.
  
ENNUI.
  
ILLEGITIMACY.
  
THE ICICLE.
  
COURAGE!

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[IX. I feel the huge dim city round me lie]

I feel the huge dim city round me lie,
Still drugged with sleep below the whitening sky.
Now sounds the sluggish roll of distant wheels;
Now falls the unsteady step of one who reels.
For year by year, in strange weird trysts like these,
Meet toil and vice, the intense antitheses.
But save for such chance noise amid the air,
A deathly and solemn calm is everywhere.
Deep in my soul, this ghostly dawn that springs
Fresh from eternity, speaks awful things!
Here to my side she seems, with spectral dress,
To steal like some pale mighty prophetess,
And tell me in some vague mysterious way
How o'er the shadowy roofs the speeding day
Inexorably bears within its breath
New joy, despair, sin, anguish, birth and death!
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