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My beautiful dead dream! The Spring
Beyond Life’s winter, which will bring
Earth’s buried ones to love’s embrace,
Will hold for me no quickening grace.
Summers may go, Octobers come;—
Deep out of sight, and pale and dumb,
Lies the hope that never was to be.
My saint who lived not—save to me!”
He went over the second section of the poem twice before the wine-warmed brain accepted the significance of the lines.