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He saw her lift her eyes; he felt The soft hand's light caressing,

And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.

"I'm sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,

Because," the brown eyes lower fell,"Because, you see, I love you!"

Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!

He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her, because they love him.
(1870)

ST. JOHN BAPTIST
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY

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40

I think he had not heard of the far towns;

Nor of the deeds of men, nor of kings' crowns;

Before the thought of God took hold of him,

As he was sitting dreaming in the calm Of one first noon, upon the desert's rim, Beneath the tall fair shadows of the palm, All overcome with some strange inward balm.

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Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene.
Hold up the canvas full in view,-
Look! there's a rent the light shines
through,

Dark with a century's fringe of dust,-
That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust!
Such is the tale the lady old,
Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told.

Who the painter was none may tell,-
One whose best was not over well;
Hard and dry, it must be confessed,
Flat as a rose that has long been pressed;
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,
Dainty colors of red and white,
And in her slender shape are seen
Hint and promise of stately mien.

Look not on her with eyes of scorn,-
Dorothy Q. was a lady born!

21

Ay! since the galloping Normans came,
England's annals have known her name;
And still to the three-hilled rebel town1
Dear is that ancient name's renown, 30
For many a civic wreath they won,
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.

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And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in the babbling air so long!
There were tones in the voice that whis-
pered then

You may hear to-day in a hundred men.

O lady and lover, how faint and far
Your images hover,-and here we are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,-
Edward's and Dorothy's-all their own,-
A goodly record for Time to show
Of a syllable spoken so long ago!-
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive
For the tender whisper that bade me live?

61

It shall be a blessing, my little maid! I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade,

And freshen the gold of the tarnished

frame,

And gild with a rhyme your household

name;

So you shall smile on us brave and bright As first you greeted the morning's light, And live untroubled by woes and fears 71 Through a second youth of a hundred years.

(1871)

MY STRAWBERRY*
HELEN HUNT JACKSON

O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause
To reckon thee. I ask what cause
Set free so much of red from heats
At core of earth, and mixed such sweets
With sour and spice: what was that
strength

Which out of darkness, length by length,
Spun all thy shining thread of vine,
Netting the fields in bond as thine.
I see thy tendrils drink by sips
From grass and clover's smiling lips; 10
I hear thy roots dig down for wells,
Tapping the meadow's hidden cells;
Whole generations of green things,
Descended from long lines of springs,
I see make room for thee to bide
A quiet comrade by their side;
I see the creeping peoples go
Mysterious journeys to and fro,
Treading to right and left of thee,
Doing thee homage wonderingly.

20

* Copyright, 1873, by Little, Brown & Company. Reprinted by special permission,

I see the wild bees as they fare,
Thy cups of honey drink, but spare.
I mark thee bathe and bathe again
In sweet uncalendared spring rain.
I watch how all May has of sun
Makes haste to have thy ripeness done,
While all her nights let dews escape
To set and cool thy perfect shape.
Ah, fruit of fruits, no more I pause
To dream and seek thy hidden laws! 30
I stretch my hand and dare to taste,
In instant of delicious waste

On single feast, all things that went
To make the empire thou hast spent.

(1873)

SONG OF PALMS

ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY

[The second half of the original poem is omitted.]

Mighty, luminous, and calm
Is the country of the palm,

Crowned with sunset and sunrise,
Under blue unbroken skies,
Waving from green zone to zone,
Over wonders of its own;
Trackless, untraversed, unknown,
Changeless through the centuries.
Who can say what thing it bears?

Blazing bird and blooming flower, 10 Dwelling there for years and years,

Hold the enchanted secret theirs: Life and death and dream have made Mysteries in many a shade, Hollow haunt and hidden bower Closed alike to sun and shower.

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World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself in our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying

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To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration

Is life of each generation;

A wondrous thing of our dreaming,
Unearthly, impossible seeming-
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,

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A BALLADE OF DREAMLAND
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

[The Ballade is an old French form, built wholly on three rhyme-sounds, repeated according to the scheme followed in this poem. The "envoi" was originally a concluding address to the poet's prince or patron.]

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,

Out of the sun's way, hidden apart; In a softer bed than the soft white snow's is,

Under the roses I hid my heart.

Why would it sleep not? why should it start,

When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?

What made sleep flutter his wings and part?

Only the song of a secret bird.

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