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1844-1881
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the worlds great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empires glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new songs measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And oerthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new worlds worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
I MADE another garden, yea,
For my new Love:
I left the dead rose where it lay
And set the new above.
Why did my Summer not begin?
Why did my heart not haste?
My old Love came and walkd therein,
And laid the garden waste.
She enterd with her weary smile,
Just as of old;
She lookd around a little while
And shiverd with the cold:
Her passing touch was death to all,
Her passing look a blight;
She made the white rose-petals fall,
And turnd the red rose white.
Her pale robe clinging to the grass
Seemd like a snake
That bit the grass and grounds, alas!
And a sad trail did make.
She went up slowly to the gate,
And then, just as of yore,
She turnd back at the last to wait
And say farewell once more.
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