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STANZAS FOR MUSIC

There be none of Beauty's daughters

With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming.

And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep,
Whose breast is gently heaving
As an infant's asleep:

So the spirit bows before thee
To listen and adore thee;

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

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'T is time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:

Yet, though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone:
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!

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The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of love, I cannot share,
But wear the chain.

But 't is not thus and 't is not here ·

Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now

Where Glory decks the hero's bier,
Or binds his brow.

The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece, around me see!
The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.

Awake! (not Greece - she is awake!)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood! - unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of Beauty be.

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live?
The land of honorable death

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Is here: up to the field, and give

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Away thy breath!

Seek out less often sought than found -
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.

George Gordon Byron

DOVER BEACH

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; - on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd!
But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

WEST LONDON

- Matthew Arnold

Crouched on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square, A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied.

A babe was in her arms, and at her side

A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.

Some laboring men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Pass'd opposite; she touched her girl, who hied
Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.
Thought I: "Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,

Of sharers in a common human fate.

"She turns from that cold succor, which attends The unknown little from the unknowing great, And points us to a better time than ours."

-Matthew Arnold

A SUMMER NIGHT

In the deserted, moon-blanch'd street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world; - but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and, lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity

Down at the far horizon's rim,

Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!

And to my mind the thought

Is on a sudden brought

Of a past night, and a far different scene.

Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
As clearly as at noon;

The spring-tide's brimming flow

Heaved dazzlingly between;

Houses, with long white sweep,

Girdled the glistening bay;

Behind, through the soft air,

The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away,

That night was far more fair

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But the same restless pacings to and fro,

And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright, calm moon.

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