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And here is the spot I tumbled, an' give the Lord his due,

When the doctor said the fever 'd turned, an' he could fetch you through.

Yes, a deal has happened to make this old house dear:

Christenin's, funerals, weddin's — what have n't we had here?

Not a log in this buildin' but its memories has got,

And not a nail in this old floor but touches a tender spot.

Out of the old house, Nancy, - moved up into the new;

All the hurry and worry is just as good as through;

But I tell you a thing right here, that I ain't ashamed to say,

There's precious things in this old house we never can take away.

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Ina Coolbrith

WHEN THE GRASS SHALL COVER ME

WHEN the grass shall cover me, Head to foot where I am lying;

When not any wind that blows, Summer blooms nor winter snows, Shall awake me to your sighing: Close above me as you pass, You will say, "How kind she was," You will say, "How true she was," When the grass grows over me.

When the grass shall cover me, Holden close to earth's warm bosom, While I laugh, or weep, or sing Nevermore, for anything, You will find in blade and blossom, Sweet small voices, odorous, Tender pleaders in my cause, That shall speak me as I was When the grass grows over me.

When the grass shall cover me! Ah, beloved, in my sorrow

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INSECT or blossom? Fragile, fairy thing,
Poised upon slender tip, and quivering
To flight! a flower of the fields of air;
A jewelled moth; a butterfly, with rare
And tender tints upon his downy wing,
A moment resting in our happy sight;
A flower held captive by a thread so slight
Its petal-wings of broidered gossamer
Are, light as the wind, with every wind
astir,

Wafting sweet odor, faint and exquisite.
O dainty nursling of the field and sky,
What fairer thing looks up to heaven's blue
And drinks the noontide sun, the dawn-
ing's dew?

Thou winged bloom! thou blossom-butterfly!

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WHAT Songs found voice upon those lips,

What magic dwelt within the pen,
Whose music into silence slips,
Whose spell lives not again!

For her the clamorous to-day
The dreamful yesterday became;
The brands upon dead hearths that lay
Leaped into living flame.

Clear ring the silvery Mission bells
Their calls to vesper and to mass;

O'er vineyard slopes, through fruited dells,
The long processions pass;

The pale Franciscan lifts in air

The Cross above the kneeling throng; Their simple world how sweet with prayer, With chant and matin-song!

There, with her dimpled, lifted hands,

Parting the mustard's golden plumes, The dusky maid, Ramona, stands

Amid the sea of blooms.

And Alessandro, type of all

His broken tribe, for evermore An exile, hears the stranger call Within his father's door.

The visions vanish and are not,

Still are the sounds of peace and strife, Passed with the earnest heart and thought Which lured them back to life.

O sunset land! O land of vine,

And rose, and bay! in silence here Let fall one little leaf of thine, With love, upon her bier.

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His feet were shod with music and had wings

Like Hermes: far upon the peaks of song
His sandals sounded silverly along;
The dull world blossomed into beauteous
things

Where'er he trod; and Heliconian springs Gushed from the rocks he touched; round him a throng

Of fair invisibles, seraphic, strong,
Struck Orphean murmurs out of golden
strings;

But he, spreading keen pinions for a white
Immensity of radiance and of peace,
Up-looming to the Empyrean infinite,
Far through ethereal fields, and zenith seas,
High, with strong wing-beats and with eagle

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The blind Bard's book was open in my hand, There where the Cyclops makes the Odyssey's

Calm pages tremble as Odysseus flees.
Then, stately, like a mirage o'er the sand,
A phantom ship across the sunset strand
Rose out of dreams and clave the purple

seas;

Straight on that city's bastions did she

run

Whose toppling turrets on their donjons hold

Bells that to mortal ears have never tolled

Then drifted down the gateways of the

sun

With fading pennon and with gonfalon, And cast her anchors in the pools of gold.

TO AN OLD VENETIAN WINE-GLASS DAUGHTER of Venice, fairer than the moon! From thy dark casement leaning, half divine,

And to the lutes of love that low repine Across the midnight of the hushed lagoon Listening with languor in a dreamful

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malign

The satin softness of thy plumed seed,
Nor so profane thee as to call thee weed,
Thou tuft of ermine down, fit to entwine
About a queen; or, fitter still, to line
The nest of birds of strange exotic breed.
The orient cunning, and the somnolent speed
Of looms of dusky Ind weave not so fine
A gossamer . . . Ah me! could he who sings,
On such adventurous and aërial wings
Far over lands and undiscovered seas
Waft the dark seeds of his imaginings,
That, flowering, men might say, Lo! look
on these

Wild Weeds of Song- not all ungracious things!

TO A MAPLE SEED

ART thou some winged Sprite, that, flutter

ing round,

Exhausted on the grass at last doth lie, Or wayward Fay? Ah, weakling, by and by

Thyself shalt grow a giant, strong and sound,

When, like Antaeus, thou dost touch the ground.

O happy Seed! it is not thine to die;
Thy wings bestow thine immortality,
And thou canst bridge the deep and dark
profound.

I hear the ecstatic song the wild bird flings,

In future summers, from thy leafy head! What hopes! what fears! what rapturous sufferings !

What burning words of love will there be said!

What sobs - what tears! what passionate whisperings!

Under thy boughs, when I, alas ! am dead.

V

SESOSTRIS

SOLE Lord of Lords and very King of

Kings,

He sits within the desert, carved in stone;
Inscrutable, colossal, and alone,
And ancienter than memory of things.
Graved on his front the sacred beetle
clings;

Disdain sits on his lips; and in a frown
Scorn lives upon his forehead for a crown.
The affrighted ostrich dare not dust her
wings

Anear this Presence. The long caravan's Dazed camels stop, and mute the Bedouins stare.

This symbol of past power more than man's Presages doom. Kings look — and Kings despair:

Their sceptres tremble in their jewelled hands,

And dark thrones totter in the baleful air!

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