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Ripples on in light and shadow

To the ballad that she sings.

7.

Do I hear her sing as of old,

My bird with the shining head,

My own dove with the tender eye?

But there rings on a sudden a passionate cry,

There is some one dying or dead,

And a sullen thunder is roll'd;

For a tumult shakes the city,

And I wake, my dream is fled;
In the shuddering dawn, behold,
Without knowledge, without pity,
By the curtains of my bed

That abiding phantom cold.

8.

Get thee hence, nor come again,

Mix not memory with doubt,

Pass, thou deathlike type of pain,

Pass and cease to move about,

'Tis the blot upon the brain

That will show itself without.

9.

Then I rise, the eavedrops fall,

And the yellow vapours choke

The great city sounding wide;
The day comes, a dull red ball
Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke

On the misty river-tide.

10.

Thro' the hubbub of the market

I steal, a wasted frame,

It crosses here, it crosses there,

Thro' all that crowd confused and loud,

The shadow still the same;

And on my heavy eyelids

My anguish hangs like shame.

11.

Alas for her that met me,

That heard me softly call,

Came glimmering thro' the laurels

At the quiet evenfall,

In the garden by the turrets

Of the old manorial hall.

12.

Would the happy spirit descend, From the realms of light and song,

In the chamber or the street,

As she looks among the blest,
Should I fear to greet my friend

Or to say 'forgive the wrong,'

Or to ask her, 'take me, sweet,

To the regions of thy rest?'

13.

But the broad light glares and beats,

And the shadow flits and fleets

And will not let me be;

And I loathe the squares and streets,

And the faces that one meets,

Hearts with no love for me:

Always I long to creep

Into some still cavern deep,

There to weep, and weep, and weep

My whole soul out to thee.

XXV.

1.

Doing

Dead, long dead,

Long dead!

And my heart is a handful of dust,

And the wheels go over my head,

And my bones are shaken with pain,

For into a shallow grave they are thrust,

Only a yard beneath the street,

And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,

The hoofs of the horses beat,

Beat into my scalp and my brain,

With never an end to the stream of passing feet,

Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying,

Clamour and rumble, and ringing and clatter,

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