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And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy
balm;

Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm!
Why should we only toil, the roof and
crown of things?

III.

Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no

care,

Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.

Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-

mellow,

Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days,

The flower ripens in its place,

Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on
the height;

To hear each other's whisper'd speech ;
Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crispingripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melan-
choly;

To muse and brood and live again in
memory,

With those old faces of our infancy
Heap'd over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an
urn of brass !

VI.

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath
suffer'd change;

For surely now our household hearths
are cold:

Our sons inheritus: our looks are strange: And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.

Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no Or else the island princes over-bold

toil,

Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

IV.

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward
the grave

In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death,
or dreamful ease.

V.

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel

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How sweet (while warm airs lull us,
But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
blowing lowly)

With half-dropt eyelids still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

How sweet it were, hearing the downward To watch the long bright river drawing

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To watch the emerald-color❜d water falling | Resting weary limbs at last on beds of Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath

divine!

Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,

Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.

VIII.

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The Lotos blooms below the barren peak
The Lotos blows by every winding creek:
All day the wind breathes low with
mellower tone :

Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the
yellow Lotus-dust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of
motion we,

Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard,
when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his
foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with
an equal mind,

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie
reclined

On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd

Far below them in the valleys, and the

clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with
the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over
wasted lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earth-
quake, roaring deeps and fiery
sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and
sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred
in a doleful song

asphodel.

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

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Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient | And tale of wrong,

Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,

Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,

Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;

Till they perish and they suffer some, 't is whisper'd down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,

I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong,

And trumpets blown for wars;

And clattering flints batter'd with clanging hoofs:

And I saw crowds in column'd sanetuaries;

And forms that pass'd at windows and on roofs

Of marble palaces;

Corpses across the threshold; heroes tall
Dislodging pinnacle and parapet

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as when a great thought strikes along The smell of violets, hidden in the green, Pour'd back into my empty soul and frame

the brain,

And flushes all the cheek.

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