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I HAVE opened the window to warm my hands on the sill | |
Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon | |
Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still | |
In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone. | |
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The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine, | 5 |
Like savage music striking far off, and there | |
On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and shine | |
Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air. | |
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There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange | |
Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud | 10 |
Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range | |
At the back of my lifes horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd. | |
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Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the mellow veil | |
Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora, | |
With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter that shakes the sail | 15 |
Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed dreams lure the unoceaned explorer. | |
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All the bygone, hushèd years | |
Streaming back where the mist distils | |
Into forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fears | |
No longer shake, where the silk sail fills | 20 |
With an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, where the storm | |
Of living has passed, on and on | |
Through the coloured iridescence that swims in the warm | |
Wake of the tumult now spent and gone, | |
Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing after | 25 |
The mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter. | |
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