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My own the burning tear-drop laves,

To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,

Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mineDash down yon cup of Samian wine!

1821.

Lord Byron.

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96

A SMALL, SWEET IDYL

COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain

height:

What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd
sang),

In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and

cease

To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,

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Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I

Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

1847.

Lord Tennyson

30

KUBLA KHAN

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were gardens, bright with sinuous

rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing

tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Infolding sunny spots of greenery.

But Oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil
seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were

breathing,

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A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail;
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles, meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale, the sacred river ran,-
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war.

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;

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Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,-

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with, a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw;

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me
That, with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,-
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
1798. 1816.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

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THE FORGING OF THE ANCHOR

COME, see the Dolphin's anchor forged; 't is at a white heat now: ¦

The bellows ceased, the flames decreased; though on the forge's brow

The little flames still fitfully play through the sable mound;

And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round,

All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands

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Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there.

The windlass strains the tackle-chains, the black mound heaves below,

And red and deep a hundred veins burst out at every throe;

It rises, roars, rends all outright-O Vulcan, what a glow!

T is blinding white, 't is blasting bright, the

high sun shines not so!

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The high sun sees not, on the earth, such a fiery,

fearful show,

The roof-ribs swarth, the candent hearth, the

ruddy, lurid row

Of smiths that stand, an ardent band, like men before the foe; .

As, quivering through his fleece of flame, the sailing monster, slow

Sinks on the anvil-all about the faces fiery

grow

"Hurrah!" they shout, "leap out, leap out; "

bang, bang, the sledges go;

Hurrah! the jetted lightnings are hissing high and low;

A hailing fount of fire is struck at every squash

ing blow;

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