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Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
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That from Heaven, or near it,
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In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
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Higher still and higher
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From the earth thou springest
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The blue deep thou wingest,
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And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
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In the golden lightning
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O'er which clouds are bright'ning.
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Thou dost float and run;
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Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
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Melts around thy flight;
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Like a star of Heaven,
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Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,
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Keen as are the arrows
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Of that silver sphere,
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Whose intense lamp narrows
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In the white dawn clear
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Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there.
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With thy voice is loud,
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As, when night is bare,
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The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed.
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What thou art we know not;
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What is most like thee?
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From rainbow clouds there flow not
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Drops so bright to see
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As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
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In the light of thought,
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Singing hymns unbidden,
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Till the world is wrought
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To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
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Like a high-born maiden
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Soothing her love-laden
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With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
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Like a glow-worm golden
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Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view!
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In its own green leaves,
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By warm winds deflowered,
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Till the scent it gives
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Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:
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Sound of vernal showers
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On the twinkling grass,
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Rain-awakened flowers,
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Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass:
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Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
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What sweet thoughts are thine:
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Praise of love or wine
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That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
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Matched with thine would be all
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A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
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What objects are the fountains
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What fields, or waves, or mountains?
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What shapes of sky or plain?
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What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
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With thy clear keen joyance
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Thou lovest—but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
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Thou of death must deem
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Things more true and deep
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Than we mortals dream,
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Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
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We look before and after,
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And pine for what is not:
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Our sincerest laughter
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With some pain is fraught;
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Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
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Hate, and pride, and fear;
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If we were things born
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I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
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Better than all measures
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Better than all treasures
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That in books are found,
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Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
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Teach me half the gladness
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That thy brain must know,
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Such harmonious madness
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From my lips would flow
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The world should listen then—as I am listening now.
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