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"Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped

Creation's chorus stopped!

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By the Fireside.

How well I know what I mean to do

When the long dark autumn evenings come;
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
With the music of all thy voices, dumb
In life's November too!

I shall be found by the fire, suppose,

O'er a great wise book, as beseemeth age;
While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,
And I turn the page, and I turn the page,
Not verse now, only prose!

Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip,
"There he is at it, deep in Greek:

Now then, or never, out we slip

ΙΟ

To cut from the hazels by the creek

A mainmast for our ship!"

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I shall be at it indeed, my friends!

Greek puts already on either side

Such a branch-work forth as soon extends
To a vista opening far and wide,

And I pass out where it ends.

The outside frame, like your hazel-trees-
But the inside-archway widens fast,

And a rarer sort succeeds to these,

And we slope to Italy at last

And youth, by green degrees.

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3. Is.-The present with future meaning: "Where will be thy pleasant hue?"

I follow wherever I am led,

Knowing so well the leader's hand:
Oh woman-country, wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male-lands,
Laid to their hearts instead!

Look at the ruined chapel again
Half-way up in the Alpine gorge!
Is that a tower, I point you plain,
Or is it a mill, or an iron forge
Breaks solitude in vain?

A turn, and we stand in the heart of things;
The woods are round us, heaped and dim;
From slab to slab how it slips and springs,

The thread of water single and slim,
Through the ravage some torrent brings!

Does it feed the little lake below?

That speck of white just on its marge

Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow,

How sharp the silver spear-heads charge When Alp meets heaven in snow!

On our other side is the straight-up rock;
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
By bowlder-stones, where lichens mock

The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit Their teeth to the polished block.

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Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,
And thorny balls, each three in one,

The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!
For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,
These early November hours,

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That crimson the creeper's leaf across

Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
Elf-needled mat of moss,

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged
Last evening-nay, in to-day's first dew
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,

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Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew
Of toad-stools peep indulged.

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And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge
That takes the turn to a range beyond,

Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge,

Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond
Danced over by the midge.

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The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,

Blackish-gray and mostly wet;

Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dike.

See here again, how the lichens fret

And the roots of the ivy strike!

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Poor little place, where its one priest comes
On a festa-day, if he comes at all,

To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,
Gathered within that precinct small

By the dozen ways one roams—

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To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts,

Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed,

73. Hemp - stalks steep.-Hemp that is soaking in preparation for dressing.

74. Fret. The lichens ornament, as with raised work.

Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts,
Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread
Their gear on the rock's bare juts.

It has some pretension too, this front,
With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise

Set over the porch, Art's early wont :
'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,
But has borne the weather's brunt---

Not from the fault of the builder, though,
For a pent-house properly projects

Where three carved beams make a certain show,
Dating-good thought of our architect's-

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'Five, six, nine, he lets you know.

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And all day long a bird sings there,

And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times;

The place is silent and aware;

It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,

But that is its own affair.

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My perfect wife, my Leonor,

Oh heart, my own, Oh eyes, mine too,

Whom else could I dare look backward for,
With whom beside should I dare pursue
The path gray heads abhor?

For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them ;
Youth, flowery all the way, there stops-

Not they; age threatens and they contemn,

Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
One inch from our life's safe hem!

98. Aware.-Self-conscious.

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101. My Leonor.-The "perfect wife," with the "great brow" and the "spirit-small hand," can be no other than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poem, though in its circumstances purely dramatic and imaginary, is autobiographic in soul. Other beautiful allusions to Mrs. Browning may be found in One Word More, Prospice, and My Star.

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