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O to be where the meanest mind is more than Shake

speare! where one look

Shows more than here the wise can find, though toiling slow from book to book!

Where life is knowledge: love is sure: and hope's brief promise made secure.

O dying voice of human praise! the crude ambitions of my youth!

I long to pour immortal lays! great pæans of perennial

Truth!

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And what are words? How little these the silence of the soul express!

Mere froth, the foam and flower of seas whose hunger

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ing waters heave and press

Against the planets and the sides of night, - mute, yearning, mystic tides!

To ease the heart with song is sweet: sweet to be heard if heard by love.

And you have heard me. When we meet, shall we not sing the old songs above

To grander music? Sweet, one kiss. O, blest it is to die like this!

To lapse from being without pain: your hand in mine, on mine your heart :

The unshaken faith to meet again that sheathes the pang with which we part:

My head upon your bosom, sweet: your hand in mine, on this old seat!

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"In

Beloved, but let your smile stay warm about me. the Lord they sleep."

...

You know the words the Scripture saith O light, O Glory! . . . is this death?

DIVIDED.

BY JEAN INGELOW.

I.

IN empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom :
We two among
them wading together,

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Shaking out honey, treading perfume.

Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,

Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet: Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.

Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
"Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.

We two walk till the purple dieth,

And short dry grass under foot is brown, But one little streak at a distance lieth

Green like a ribbon to prank the down.

II.

Over the grass we stepped unto it,

And God he knoweth how blithe we were! Never a voice to bid us eschew it;

Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!

Hey the

green ribbon! we kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen;
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.

Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us,
Light was our talk as of faëry bells,
Faëry wedding-bells faintly rung to us,
Down in their fortunate parallels.

Hand in hand, while the sun peered over,

We lapped the grass on that youngling spring, Swept back its rushes, smoothed its clover, And said, "Let us follow it westering."

III.

A dappled sky, a world of meadows;
Circling above us the black rooks fly,
Forward, backward: lo, their dark shadows
Flit on the blossoming tapestry,—

Flit on the beck,

for her long grass parteth,

As hair from a maid's bright eyes blown back; And lo, the sun like a lover darteth

His flattering smile on her wayward track.

Sing on! we sing in the glorious weather,
Till one steps over the tiny strand,
So narrow, in sooth, that still together
On either brink we go hand in hand.

The beck grows wider, the hands must sever.
On either margin, our songs all done,
We move apart, while she singeth ever,
Taking the course of the stooping sun.

He prays,
I cry, "Return,"

"Come over,"

I may not follow ;

- but he cannot come :

We speak, we laugh, but with voices hollow;

Our hands are hanging, our hearts are numb.

IV.

A breathing sigh, - a sigh for answer;
A little talking of outward things:
The careless beck is a merry dancer,

Keeping sweet time to the air she sings.

A little pain when the beck grows wider, "Cross to me now, for her wavelets swell" : "I may not cross," and the voice beside her Faintly reacheth, though heeded well.

No backward path; ah! no returning;

No second crossing that ripple's flow; "Come to me now, for the west is burning; Come ere it darkens."

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Ah, no! ah, no!"

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