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Was it he lay there with a fading eye?
The fault was mine,' he whisper'd, 'fly!'
Then glided out of the joyous wood
The ghastly Wraith of one that I know;
And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry,
A cry for a brother's blood:

It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die, till I die.

2

Is it gone? my pulses beat

What was it? a lying trick of the brain?
Yet I thought I saw her stand,

A shadow there at my feet,

High over the shadowy land.

It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain,
When they should burst and drown with delug-
ing storms

The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust,
The little hearts that know not how to forgive:
Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just,
Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous

worms,

That sting each other here in the dust;
We are not worthy to live.

Maud

XXIV

I

See what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,

Maud

Frail, but a work divine, val of ti on V?
Made so fairily well inn enw slug vď?
With delicate spire and whorl,lg nad
How exquisitely minute,

A miracle of design!

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2

What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.

Let him name it who can, onog d
The beauty would be the same.

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The tiny cell is forlorn,

Void of the little living

That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?

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5

Breton, not Briton; here

Like a shipwreck'd man on a coast
Of ancient fable and fearg a di
Plagued with a flitting to and fro,
A disease, a hard mechanic ghost
That never came from on high
Nor ever rose from below, wrakto
But only moves with the moving eye,
Flying along the land and the main-
Why should it look like Maud?
Am I to be overawed

By what I cannot but know be
Is a juggle born of the brain?

6

Back from the Breton coast,
Sick of a nameless fear,

Back to the dark sea-line

Looking, thinking of all I have lost;

An old song vexes my ear;

But that of Lamech is mine.

Maud

For years, a measureless ill,
For years, for ever, to part—
But she, she would love me still;
And as long, O God, as she
Have a grain of love for me,
So long, no doubt, no doubt,
Shall I nurse in my dark heart,
However weary, a spark of will, befo
Not to be trampled out.

Maud

8

Strange, that the mind, when fraught
With a passion so intense

One would think that it well
Might drown all life in the eye,-
That it should, by being so overwrought,
Suddenly strike on a sharper sense
For a shell, or a flower, little things
Which else would have been past by!
And now I remember, I,

When he lay dying there,

I noticed one of his many rings

(For he had many, poor worm) and thought It is his mother's hair.

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Whether I need have fled?

Am I guilty of blood?

However this may be,

Comfort her, comfort her, all things good,
While I am over the sea !

Let me and my passionate love go by,
But speak to her all things holy and high,
Whatever happen to me!

Me and my harmful love go by; bi
But come to her waking, find her asleep,
Powers of the height, Powers of the deep,
And comfort her tho' I die, orswoud

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Maud

XXV

Courage, poor heart of stone!
I will not ask thee why
Thou canst not understand

That thou art left for ever alone:
Courage, poor stupid heart of stone.-
Or if I ask thee why,

Care not thou to reply:

She is but dead, and the time is at hand
When thou shalt more than die.

XXVI

I

O that 'twere possible
After long grief and pain

To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!

When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
By the home that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter
Than anything on earth.

D

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