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Flower-de-Luce.

O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river
Linger to kiss thy feet!

O flower of song, bloom on, and make for ever
The world more fair and sweet.

9

I

PALIN GENESIS.

LAY upon the headland-height, and listened

To the incessant sobbing of the sea

In caverns under me,

An watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,

Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
Melted away in mist.

Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;
For round about me all the sunny capes

Seemed peopled with the shapes

Of those whom I had known in days departed, Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams

On faces seen in dreams.

Palingenesis.

A moment only, and the light and glory
Faded away, and the disconsolate sho
Stood lonely as before;

And the wild roses of the promontory

Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed. Their petals of pale red.

There was an old belief that in the embers Of all things t eir primordial form exists, And cunning alchemists

Could re-create the rose with all its members From its own ashes, but without the bloom, Without the lost perfume.

Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore?

What craft of alchemy can bid defiance

To time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower?

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"O, give me back!" I cried, "the vanished

splendours,

The breath of morn, and the exultant strife,
When the swift stream of life

Bounds o'er its rocky channel, and surrenders
The pond, with all its lilies, for the leap
Into the unknown deep!'

And the sea answered, with a lamentation, Like some old prophet wailing, and it said, "Alas! thy youth is dead!

It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsa

tion;

In the dark places with the dead of old

It lies for ever cold!' ""

Then said I, "From its consecrated cerements

I will not drag this sacred dust again,

Only to give me pain;

Palingenesis.

13

But, still remembering all the lost endearments,
Go on my way, like one who looks before,
And turns to weep no more.”

Into what land of harvests, what plantations
Bright with autumnal foliage and the glow
Of sunsets burning low;

Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations

Light up the spacious avenues between
This world and the unseen!

Amid what friendly greetings and caresses, What households, though not alien, yet not mine, What bowers of rest divine;

To what temptations in lone wildernesses,

What famine of the heart, what pain and loss,

The bearing of what cross!

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