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O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
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By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
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And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
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Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
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Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
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The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
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I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
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And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
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Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
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In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
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Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
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A brooklet, scarce espied:
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'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
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Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
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They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
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Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
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Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,
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As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
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And ready still past kisses to outnumber
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At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
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The winged boy I knew;
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But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
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O latest born and loveliest vision far
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Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
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Fairer than Phœbe's sapphire-region'd star,
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Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
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Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
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Nor altar heap'd with flowers;
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Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
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Upon the midnight hours;
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No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
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From chain-swung censer teeming;
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No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
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Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.
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O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
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Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
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When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
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Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
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Yet even in these days so far retir'd
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From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
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Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
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I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
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So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
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Upon the midnight hours;
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Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
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From swinged censer teeming;
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Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
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Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.
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Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
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In some untrodden region of my mind,
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Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
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Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
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Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees
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Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
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And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
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The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
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And in the midst of this wide quietness
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A rosy sanctuary will I dress
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With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
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With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
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With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
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Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
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And there shall be for thee all soft delight
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That shadowy thought can win,
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A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
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To let the warm Love in!
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