Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.

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"My days, my friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,

And many love me; but by none

Am I enough beloved."

"Now both himself and me he wrongs,

The man who thus complains!

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I live and sing my idle songs

SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;

A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye!

-Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

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She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and oh,

The difference to me!

ΙΟ

Thy mornings show'd, thy nights conceal'd

The bowers where Lucy play'd;

And thine too is the last green field

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That Lucy's eyes survey'd.

THE EDUCATION OF NATURE

THREE years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown:

This Child I to myself will take;

She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own,

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66 Myself will to my darling be

Both law and impulse: and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,

Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;

And her's shall be the breathing balm,
And her's the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.

IO

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66 The floating clouds their state shall lend

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To her; for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see

Ev'n in the motions of the storm

Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.

"The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face.

"And vital feelings of delight

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Thus Nature spake-The work was done—
How soon my Lucy's race was run!

She died, and left to me

This heath, this calm and quiet scene;

The memory of what has been,

And never more will be.

A SLUMBER DID MY SPIRIT SEAL

A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

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