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LXX.

AN INTERIOR.

THE grass around my limbs is deep and sweet;
Yonder the house has lost its shadow wholly,
The blinds are dropped, and softly now and slowly
The day flows in and floats; a calm retreat

Of tempered light where fair things fair things meet;
White busts and marble Dian make it holy,
Within a niche hangs Durer's Melancholy
Brooding; and, should you enter, there will greet
Your sense with vague allurement effluence faint
Of one magnolia bloom; fair fingers draw
From the piano Chopin's heart-complaint;
Alone, white-robed she sits; a fierce macaw
On the verandah, proud of plume and paint,
Screams, insolent despot, showing beak and claw.

LXXI.

EVENING, NEAR THE SEA.

LIGHT ebbs from off the Earth; the fields are strange,
Dark, trackless, tenantless; now the mute sky
Resigns itself to Night and Memory,

And no wind will yon sunken clouds derange,
No glory enrapture them; from cot or grange
The rare voice ceases; one long-breathëd sigh,
And steeped in summer sleep the world must lie;
All things are acquiescing in the change.
Hush while the vaulted hollow of the night
Deepens, what voice is this the sea sends forth,
Disconsolate iterance, a passionless moan?
Ah! now the Day is gone, and tyrannous Light
And the calm presence of fruit-bearing Earth:
Cry, Sea it is thy hour; thou art alone.

LXXII.

AWAKENING.

WITH brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod,
With eye so practised in each form around,—
And all forms mean,-to glance above the ground
Irks it, each day of many days we plod,
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life's common road;
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound
Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,
And we awake. O joy of deep amaze !
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,

We hear the voices of the morning seas,

And earnest prophesyings in the land,

While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.

LXXIII.

TWO INFINITIES.

A LONELY way, and as I went my eyes
Could not unfasten from the Spring's sweet things,
Lush-sprouted grass, and all that climbs and clings

In loose, deep hedges, where the primrose lies
In her own fairness, buried blooms surprise

The plunderer bee and stop his murmurings,
And the glad flutter of a finch's wings
Outstartle small blue-speckled butterflies.
Blissfully did one speed well plot beguile

My whole heart long; I loved each separate flower, Kneeling. I looked up suddenly-Dear God! There stretched the shining plain for many a mile, The mountains rose with what invincible power! And how the sky was fathomless and broad!

LXXIV.

BROTHER DEATH.

WHEN thou would'st have me go with thee, O Death,
Over the utmost verge, to the dim place,
Practise upon me with no amorous grace
Of fawning lips, and words of delicate breath,
And curious music thy lute uttereth;

Nor think for me there must be sought-out ways
Of cloud and terror; have we many days
Sojourned together, and is this thy faith?
Nay, be there plainness 'twixt us; come to me
Even as thou art, O brother of my soul;

Hold thy hand out and I will place mine there ;

I trust thy mouth's inscrutable irony,

And dare to lay my forehead where the whole

Shadow lies deep of thy purpureal hair,

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