IN UTRUMQUE PARATUS
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f, in the silent mind of One all-pure,At first imagined layThe sacred world; and by procession sureFrom those still deeps, in form and colour drest,Seasons alternating, and night and day,The long-mused thought to north, south, east, and west,Took then its all-seen way; O waking on a world which thus-wise springs!Whether it needs thee countBetwixt thy waking and the birth of thingsAges or hours--O waking on life's stream!By lonely pureness to the all-pure fount(Only by this thou canst) the colour'd dreamOf life remount! Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow,And faint the city gleams;Rare the lone pastoral huts--marvel not thou!The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams;Alone the sun arises, and aloneSpring the great streams. But, if the wild unfather'd mass no birthIn divine seats hath known;In the blank, echoing solitude if Earth,Rocking her obscure body to and fro,Ceases not from all time to heave and groan,Unfruitful oft, and at her happiest throeForms, what she forms, alone; O seeming sole to awake, thy sun-bathed headPiercing the solemn cloudRound thy still dreaming brother-world outspread!O man, whom Earth, thy long-vext mother, bareNot without joy--so radiant, so endow'd(Such happy issue crown'd her painful care)--Be not too proud! Oh when most self-exalted most alone,Chief dreamer, own thy dream!Thy brother-world stirs at thy feet unknown,Who hath a monarch's hath no brother's part;Yet doth thine inmost soul with yearning teem.--Oh, what a spasm shakes the dreamer's heart!"_I, too, but seem._"
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