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To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought
With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps 81
He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano overcanopies
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice

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With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes 85
On black bare pointed islets ever beat
With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves
Rugged and dark, winding among the springs
Of fire and poison, inaccessible
To avarice or pride, their starry domes
Of diamond and of gold expand above
Numberless and immeasurable halls,
Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines
Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
Nor had that scene of ampler majesty
Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven
And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims
To love and wonder; he would linger long
In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
Until the doves and squirrels would partake 100
From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,
And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er
The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend
Her timid steps to gaze upon a form
More graceful than her own.

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His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful ruins of the days of old:

Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange

Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste

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Stupendous columns, and wild images

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Of more than man, where marble dæmons watch The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls

around,

He lingered, poring on memorials

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Of the world's youth, through the long burning day

Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the

moon

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Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades,
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

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The Poet wandering on, through Arabie And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o'er the aërial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, In joy and exultation held his way; Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep There came, a dream of hopes that never yet 150 Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

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Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
A permeating fire: wild numbers then

She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands 165
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange
harp

Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
The beating of her heart was heard to fill
The pauses of her music, and her breath
Tumultuously accorded with those fits
Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
As if her heart impatiently endured

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Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,
And saw by the warm light of their own life 175
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,

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worlds a dre

dies wake up

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

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Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled

His gasping breath, and spread his arms to

meet

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Her panting bosom: . . . she drew back awhile,
Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
Like a dark flood suspended in its course,
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

*

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HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY The awful shadow of some unseen Power

Floats though unseen amongst us, visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,

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Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

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ΙΟ

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon human thought or form, - where art thou gone?

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Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not forever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is
shown,

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Beauty will

from the world,

From all we hear and all we see,

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Doubt, chance, and mutability. Thy light alone - like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night wind sent, Through strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet de

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I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! 60
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine- - have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in
visioned bower

Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outstretched with me the envious night
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

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The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth

AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS

Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply

Its calm to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

SONNET

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land

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Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 5 Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, (stamped on these lifeless things,)

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

ΙΟ

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To the haven of the grave.

What if there no friends will greet;
What if there no heart will meet
His with love's impatient beat;
Wander wheresoe'er he may,
Can he dream before that day
To find refuge from distress

In friendship's smile, in love's caress?

Lo, the sun floats up the sky
Like thought-winged Liberty,
Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height;
From the sea a mist has spread,
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago.

By the skirts of that gray cloud
Many-domèd Padua proud
Stands, a peopled solitude,
'Mid the harvest-shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow
With the purple vintage strain,
Heaped upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will;

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Till the ship has almost drank

Death from the o'er-brimming deep; And sinks down, down, like that sleep

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When the dreamer seems to be

But Death promised, to assuage her, That he would petition for

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