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Mind free, step free,

Days to follow after,

Joys of life sold to me

For the price of laughter.

Girl's love, man's love,

Love of work and duty,

Just a will of God's to prove
Beauty, beauty, beauty!

William Stanley Braithwaite [1878

PATMOS

ALL around him Patmos lies,
Who hath spirit-gifted eyes,
Who his happy sight can suit
To the great and the minute.
Doubt not but he holds in view
A new earth and heaven new;
Doubt not but his ear doth catch

Strain nor voice nor reed can match:

Many a silver, sphery note
Shall within his hearing float.

All around him Patmos lies,
Who unto God's priestess flies:
Thou, O Nature, bid him see,
Through all guises worn by thee,
A divine apocalypse.

Manifold his fellowships:

Now the rocks their archives ope;
Voiceless creatures tell their hope
In a language symbol-wrought;
Groves to him sigh out their thought;
Musings of the flower and grass
Through his quiet spirit pass.
'Twixt new earth and heaven new
He hath traced and holds the clue,
Number his delights ye may not;
Fleets the year but these decay not.
Now the freshets of the rain,
Bounding on from hill to plain,
Show him earthly streams have rise
In the bosom of the skies.
Now he feels the morning thrill,
As upmounts, unseen and still,
Dew the wing of evening drops.
Now the frost, that meets and stops
Summer's feet in tender sward,
Greets him, breathing heavenward.
Hieroglyphics writes the snow,
Through the silence falling slow;
Types of star and petaled bloom
A white missal-page illume.
By these floating symbols fine,
Heaven-truth shall be divine.

All around him Patmos lies,
Who hath spirit-gifted eyes;
He need not afar remove,
He need not the times reprove,
Who would hold perpetual lease

Of an isle in seas of peace.

Edith M. Thomas [1854

DAWN AND DARK

PHOEBUS, arise,

SONG

And paint the sable skies

With azure, white, and red:

Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed,
That she thy càreer may with roses spread:
The nightingales thy coming each where sing,
Make an eternal Spring!

Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair.

In larger locks than thou wast wont before,

And, emperor-like, decore

With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:

Chase hence the ugly night,

Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

This is that happy morn,

That day, long-wished day,

Of all my life so dark,

(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn,

And fates not hope betray,)

Which, only white, deserves

A diamond for ever should it mark.

This is the morn should bring unto this grove

My Love, to hear and recompense my love.

Fair king, who all preserves,

But show thy blushing beams,

And thou two sweeter eyes

Shalt see, than those which by Peneus' streams

Did once thy heart surprise.

Nay, suns, which shine as clear

As thou, when two thou didst to Rome appear.

Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise:

If that ye, winds, would hear

A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre,

Your stormy chiding stay;

Let Zephyr only breathe,

And with her tresses play,

Kissing sometimes these purple ports of death.
-The winds all silent are,
And Phoebus in his chair
Ensaffroning sea and air,
Makes vanish every star:
Night like a drunkard reels

Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels:
The fields with flowers are decked in every hue,
The clouds bespangle with bright gold their blue:
Here is the pleasant place,

And everything save her, who all should grace. William Drummond [1585-1649]

HYMN OF APOLLO

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of Night.

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I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers,
With their ethereal colors; the Moon's globe,
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers,

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine,
Are portions of one power, which is mine.

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven;
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle?

I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows it is divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,

All prophecy, all medicine, is mine,
All light of art or nature;-to my song
Victory and praise in its own right belong.

Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822]

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THE night was dark, though sometimes a faint star
A little while a little space made bright.

The night was dark and still the dawn seemed far,
When, o'er the muttering and invisible sea,

Slowly, within the East, there grew a light

Which half was starlight, and half seemed to be

The herald of a greater. The pale white

and up the height

Turned slowly to pale rose,
Of heaven slowly climbed. The gray sea grew
Rose-colored like the sky. A white gull flew
Straight toward the utmost boundary of the East
Where slowly the rose gathered and increased.
There was light now, where all was black before:
It was as on the opening of a door

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