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How go on your flowers? None double? 45
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange! And I, too, at such trouble
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:

If I trip him just a-dying,

Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee!

Or, my scrofulous French novel
On gray paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages

At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

Or, there's Satan! one might venture Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave

Such a flaw in the indenture

As he'd miss till, past retrieve, Blasted lay that rose-acacia

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бо

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We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine. . . 70 'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia,

Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r-you swine!

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Then I tuned my harp,-took off the lilies we twine round its chords

Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide-those sunbeams like swords! 35 And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one,

So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done.

They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed

Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed;

And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star

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And waiting his change, the king serpent To console us? The land has none left

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When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung

The low song of the nearly-departed, and hear her faint tongue

Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more attest

I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best?' 85 Then they sung through their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest.

And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew Such result as, from seething grapebundles, the spirit strained true: And the friends of thy boyhood-that boyhood of wonder and hope,

Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,

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o'erlap and entwine

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Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye

And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?

He saith, "It is good;" still he drinks not: he lets me praise life,

Gives assent, yet would die for his own part.

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135

Then fancies grew rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep

Fed in silence-above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep;

And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie

'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky:

And I laughed-"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, 140 Let me people, at least with my fancies, the plains and the rocks,

Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show

Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!

Schemes of life, its best rules and right

uses, the courage that gains, And the prudence that keeps what men

strive for." And now these old trains Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so once more the string Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus

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"Yea, my King,"

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I began "thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute:

Base with base to knit strength more in- In our flesh grows the branch of this life, tensely; so, arm folded arm

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in our soul it bears fruit. 150 Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, -how its stem trembled first Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst

The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was to learn, E'en the good that comes in with the palmfruit. Our dates shall we slight, 155 When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight

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For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to amend,

In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend

(See, in tablets 't is level before them) their praise, and record 185 With the gold of the graver, Saul's story, -the statesman's great word

Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave

With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave: So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part

In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!"

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