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LOVE thou thy land, with love far-brought From out the storied Past, and used Within the Present, but transfused Thro' future time by power of thought.

True love turn'd round on fixed poles,

Love, that endures not sordid ends, For English natures, freemen, friends, Thy brothers and immortal souls.

But pamper not a hasty time,

Nor feed with crude imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings, That every sophister can lime.

Deliver not the tasks of might

To weakness, neither hide the ray From those, not blind, who wait for day,

Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light.

Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds.

Watch what main currents draw the years:

Cut Prejudice against the grain : But gentle words are always gain : Regard the weakness of thy peers :

Nor toil for title, place, or touch

Of pension, neither count on praise : It grows to guerdon after-days: Nor deal in watch-words overmuch :

Not clinging to some ancient saw ;

Not master'd by some modern term; Not swift nor slow to change, but firm: And in its season bring the law;

That from Discussion's lip may fall With Life, that, working strongly, binds-

Set in all lights by many minds, To close the interests of all.

For Nature also, cold and warm, And moist and dry, devising long, Thro' many agents making strong, Matures the individual form.

Meet is it changes should control

Our being, lest we rust in ease.

We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul.

So let the change which comes be free To ingroove itself with that, which flies, And work, a joint of state, that plies Its office, moved with sympathy.

A saying, hard to shape in act;

For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.

Ev'n now we hear with inward strife
A motion toiling in the gloom -
The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life.

A slow-develop'd strength awaits

Completion in a painful school; Phantoms of other forms of rule, New Majesties of mighty States—

The warders of the growing hour,

But vague in vapor, hard to mark ; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power.

Of many changes, aptly join'd,

Is bodied forth the second whole. Regard gradation, lest the soul Of Discord race the rising wind ;

A wind to puff your idol-fires,

And heap their ashes on the head; To shame the boast so often made, That we are wiser than our sires.

O yet, if Nature's evil star

Drive men in manhood, as in youth, To follow flying steps of Truth Across the brazen bridge of war

If New and Old, disastrous feud,

Must ever shock, like armed foes, And this be true, till Time shall close, That Principles are rain'd in blood;

Not yet the wise of heart would cease To hold his hope thro' shame and guilt, But with his hand against the hilt, Would pace the troubled land, like Peace;

Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay,

Would serve his kind in deed and word, Certain, if knowledge bring the sword, That knowledge takes the sword away

It clack'd and cackled louder.

Would love the gleams of good that broke | But ah! the more the white goose laid
From either side, nor veil his eyes:
And if some dreadful need should rise
Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke:

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It clutter'd here, it chuckled there;
It stirr'd the old wife's mettle :
She shifted in her elbow-chair,
And hurl'd the pan and kettle.

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The game of forfeits done the girls all kiss'd

Beneath the sacred bush and pastawayThe parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,

The host, and I sat round the wassailbowl,

Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk,

How all the old honor had from Christmas gone,

Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games

In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out With cutting eights that day upon the pond,

Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,

I bump'd the ice into three several stars, Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard The parson taking wide and wider sweeps, Now harping on the church-commission

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He thought that nothing new was said, or else

Something so said 't was nothing that a truth

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So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fall'n in Lyonness about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound
was deep,

The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one

Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedi-

vere:

"The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds record. Such

a sleep

They sleep the men I loved. I think
that we

Shall nevermore, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly

deeds,

Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made,
Tho' Merlin sware that I should come
again

By zig-zag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.
There drew he forth the brand Excali-

bur,

Ando'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth

And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:

For all the haft twinkled with diamond
sparks,

Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled, as he
stood,

This way and that dividing the swift mind,
In act to throw: but at the last it seem'd

To rule once more but let what will Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd

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