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From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine;

And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn:

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol, all of blackest hue; In vain, with cymbals' ring,

They call the grizzly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue;

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud: Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest;

Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worship'd ark.

He feels, from Juda's land,

The dreaded Infant's hand;

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn:

Nor all the gods beside.

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show His Godhead true,

Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew.

So, when the sun in bed

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted fays

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

But see! the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending: Heaven's youngest-teemed star

Hath fixt her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending: And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harness'd Angels sit in order serviceable.

LUCY

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Three years she grew in sun and shower; Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown:

This child I to myself will take:
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be

Both law and impulse; and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

"She shall be sportive as the fawn, That wild with glee across the lawn,

Or up the mountain springs;

And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm

Of mute insensate things.

"The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see,

E'en in the motions of the storm

Grace that shall mold the maiden's form, By silent sympathy.

"The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place,

Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound, Shall pass into her face.

"And vital feelings of delight,

Shall rear her form to stately height,
Her virgin bosom swell;

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give,
While she and I together live,

Here in this happy dell."

Thus Nature spake. The work was done―
How soon my Lucy's race was run!
She died, and left to me

This heath, this calm and quiet scene;
The memory of what has been,

And never more will be.

FLOW GENTLY, SWEET AFTON

BY ROBERT BURNS

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds through the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear,
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighboring hills,
Far marked with the courses of clear winding rills;
There daily I wander as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
There oft as mild evening weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,

As gathering sweet flow 'rets she stems thy clear wave.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

THE INCHCAPE ROCK

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY

No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,
The ship was still as she could be;
Her sails from heaven received no motion,
Her keel was steady in the ocean.

Without either sign or sound of their shock
The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock;
So little they rose, so little they fell,
They did not move the Inchcape Bell.

The worthy Abbot of Aberbrothock
Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock;
On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
And over the waves its warning rung.

When the rock was hid by the surges' swell,
The mariners heard the warning bell;
And then they knew the perilous rock,
And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothock.

The sun in heaven was shining gay,
All things were joyful on that day;
The sea-birds screamed as they wheel'd round,
And there was joyance in their sound.

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