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A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.

All those sharp fancies by down-lapsing thought I answered free; and turning I appealed Streamed onward, lost their edges, and did

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To one that stood beside.

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But she, with sick and scornful looks averse, To her full height her stately statue draws. "My youth," she said, "was blasted with a

curse:

This woman was the cause.

"I was cut off from hope in that sad place, Which yet to name my spirit loathes and fears:

My father held his hand upon his face;
I, blinded with my tears,

"Still strove to speak: my voice was thick with sighs

As in a dream. Dimly I could descry The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes, Waiting to see me die.

"The high masts flickered as they lay afloat; The crowds, the temples, wavered, and the shore ;

The bright death quivered at the victim's throat; Touched; and I knew no more."

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"And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,

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THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.

"Alas! alas!" a low voice, full of care,

Murmured beside me: "Turn and look on

me:

I am that Rosamond, whom men call fair,

If what I was I be.

"Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor!

O me, that I should ever see the light!
Those dragon-eyes of angered Eleanor,
Do hunt me, day and night."

She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust: To whom the Egyptian: "Oh, you tamely died!

You should have clung to Fulvia's waist, and thrust

The dagger through her side."

With that sharp sound the white dawn's creeping beams,

Stolen to my brain, dissolved the mystery Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams Ruled in the eastern sky

Morn broadened on the borders of the dark,

Ere I saw her, who clasped in her last trance Her murdered father's head, or Joan of Arc, A light of ancient France;

Or her, who knew that love can vanquish death, Who kneeling, with one arm about her king, Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, Sweet as new buds in spring.

No memory labors longer from the deep

Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep To gather and tell o'er

Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain

Compassed, how eagerly I sought to strike Into that wondrous track of dreams again! But no two dreams are like.

As when a soul laments, which hath been blessed,
Desiring what is mingled with past years,

In yearnings that can never be expressed
By signs, or groans, or tears;

Because all words, though culled with choicest art,

Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, Wither beneath the palate, and the heart Faints, faded by its heat.

THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.

FULL knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a dying.

Old year, you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year, you shall not die.

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The night is starry and cold, my friend,

And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,

Comes up to take his own.

How hard he breathes! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro:

The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
'T is nearly twelve o'clock.

Shake hands, before you die.
Old year, we'll dearly rue for you:
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die.

His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack! our friend is gone:

Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,

And waiteth at the door.

There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.

You ask me, why, though ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,.
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas?
It is the land that freemen till,

That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land where girt with friends or foes

A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown, Where freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent:

Where faction seldom gathers head,

But by degrees to fulness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread.

Should banded unions persecute

Opinion, and induce a time

When single thought is civil crime, And individual freedom mute:

Though power should make from land to land The name of Britain trebly greatThough every channel of the state Should almost choke with golden sand—

Yet waft me from the harbor-mouth,
Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I will see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.

MORTE D'ARTHUR.

So all day long the noise of battle rolled
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 Bedivere:
"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 never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of nightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made-
Though Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more--but let what will be, be,
I am so deeply smitten through the helm
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how
In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword-and how I rowed across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king:
And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In after-time, this also shall be known:

But now delay not: take Excalibur,

And fling him far into the middle mere:

And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping
down

By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.

There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,
And o'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 studs,
Myraids 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 seemed
Better to leave Excalibur concealed
There in the many-knotted water-flags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded king.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"Hast thou performed my mission which I gave?
What is it thou hast seen? or what hast

heard?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag."

To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale: "Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseemed Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had followed, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word." Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud:

"And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious thing, one worthy note, Should thus be lost forever from the earth, Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were done? What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey, then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against himself? The king is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to after-time, but empty breath And rumors of a doubt? but were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, Some one might show it at a joust of arms, Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake.

Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps

word."

To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere: "It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus, Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm. A little thing may harm a wounded man. Yet I thy hest will all perform at full, Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word." So saying, from the ruined shrine he stepped

Upon the hidden bases of the hills.'

So might some old man speak in the after-time
To all the people, winning reverence.
But now much honor and much fame were lost."
So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,
And hid Excalibur the second time,
And so strode back slow to the wounded king.
Then spake King Arthur, breathing heavily

MORTE D'ARTHUR.

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"What is it thou hast seen? or what hast | And would have spoken, but he found not

heard?"

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"Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me! Authority forgets a dying king,

Laid widowed of the power in his eye

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That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art,
For thou, the latest left of all my knights,
In whom should meet the offices of all,
Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,

And the third time may prosper, get thee hence:
But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,
I will arise and slay thee with my hands."
Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly plunged
Among the bull-rush beds, and clutched the
sword,

And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand

Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,

Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea.
So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipped the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandished

him

Three times, and drew him under in the mere.
And lightly went the other to the king.
Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker
breath:

"Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not though I live three lives of mortal men, So great a miracle as yonder hilt.

Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him;

But when I looked again, behold an arm,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
That caught him by the hilt, and brandished
him

Three times and drew him under in the mere." And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard:

"My end draws nigh; 't is time that I were gone.

Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight,
And bear me to the margin; yet I fear
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."

So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking whistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere
Remorsefully regarded through his tears,

Muttering and murmuring at his ear: "Quick, quick!

I fear it is too late, and I shall die."
But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he
walked,

Larger than human on the frozen hills.
He heard the deep behind him, and a cry
Before. His own thought drove him like a goad.
Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he
based

His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels-
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them; and descending they were 'ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream-by these

Three queens with crowns of gold-and from them rose

A cry that shivered to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come, since the making of the world.
Then murmured Arthur, "Place me in the
barge."

And to the barge they came. There those three queens

Put forth their hands, and took the king, and wept.

But she, that rose the tallest of them all
And fairest, laid his head upon her lap,
And loosed the shattered casque, and chafed his
hands,

And called him by his name, complaining loud,
And dropping bitter tears against his brow
Striped with dark blood; for all his face was

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