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40

And mine in his was wound, and whirled
About empyreal heights of thought,

And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,

Eonian music measuring out

The steps of Time, the shocks of Chance,The blows of Death. At length my trance Was cancelled, stricken through with doubt.

Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev'n for intellect to reach
Through memory that which I became :

Till now the doubtful dusk revealed

The knolls once more where, couched at ease,

The white kine glimmered, and the trees

Laid their dark arms about the field:

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And sucked from out the distant gloom,
A breeze began to tremble o'er

The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume;

And gathering freshlier overhead,

Rocked the full-foliaged elms, and swung

The heavy-folded rose, and flung

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"The dawn, the dawn," and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,

Mixed their dim lights, like life and death,

To broaden into boundless day.

Του

✓ ✓ XCIV.

say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes

Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.

I know not one indeed I knew

In many a subtile question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true :

Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds,

At last he beat his music out.

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,

He faced the spectres of the mind

And laid them thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own;

And Power was with him in the night,

Which makes the darkness and the light,

And dwells not in the light alone,

But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinaï's peaks of old,

While Israel made their gods of gold
Although the trumpet blew so loud.

XCV.

My love has talked with rocks and trees,
He finds on misty mountain-ground

His own vast shadow glory-crowned,

He sees himself in all he sees.

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I looked on these and thought of thee

In vastness and in mystery,

And of my spirit as of a wife.

These two, they dwelt with eye on eye,

Their hearts of old have beat in tune,

Their meetings made December June, Their every parting was to die.

Their love has never passed away;

The days she never can forget Are earnest that he loves her yet, Whate'er the faithless people say.

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