BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. (Barry Cornwall.)
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IT KINDLES ALL MY SOUL.
"Urit me Patriae decor."
It kindles all my soul,
My country's loveliness! Those starry choirs
That watch around the pole,
And the moon's tender light, and heavenly fires
Through golden halls that roll.
O chorus of the night! O planets, sworn
The music of the spheres
To follow! Lovely watchers, that think scorn
To rest till day appears!
Me, for celestial homes of glory born,
Why here, O, why so long,
Do ye behold an exile from on high?
Here, O ye shining throng,
With lilies spread the mound where I shall lie:
Here let me drop my chain,
And dust to dust returning, cast away
The trammels that remain;
The rest of me shall spring to endless day!
From the Latin of CASIMIR OF POLAND.
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EPILOGUE.
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time.
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
—Pity me?
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless did I drivel
—Being—who?