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| FAIR are the sunset hues, thy dark brow blessing, | |
| O mountain, with their gift of golden rays; | |
| And the few floating clouds, thy crest caressing, | |
| Seem guardian angels to my raptured gaze: | |
| I have looked on thee through the saddest tears | 5 |
| That ever human sorrow taught to flow, | |
| And thou wilt come, in life’s recalling years, | |
| Linked with the memory of my deepest woe. | |
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| Yet well I love thee, in thy silent mystery, | |
| Thy purple shadows and thy glowing light,— | 10 |
| Thou art to me a most poetic history | |
| Of stillest beauty and of stormiest might: | |
| I owe thee, O sublime and solemn mountain, | |
| For many hours of vision and of thought, | |
| For pleasant draughts from fancy’s gushing fountain, | 15 |
| For bright illusions by thy presence brought. | |
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| And more I thank thee, for the deeper learning | |
| That soothes my spirit as I look on thee, | |
| For thou hast laid upon my soul’s wild yearning | |
| The holy spell of thy tranquillity: | 20 |
| I shall recall thee with a long regretting, | |
| And often pine to see thy brow, in vain, | |
| While Thought, returning, fond and unforgetting, | |
| Will trace thy form in glory-tints again. | |
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| And thou, in thine experience, all material, | 25 |
| Wilt never know how worshipped thou hast been; | |
| No glimpses of the life that is ethereal | |
| Shadow thy face, eternally serene! | |
| Thou hast not felt the impulse of resistance,— | |
| Thy lot has linked thee with the earth alone: | 30 |
| Thou art no traveller to a new existence, | |
| Thou hast no future to be lost or won. | |
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| The past for thee contains no bitter fountain,— | |
| Thou hast no onward mission to fulfil; | |
| And I would learn from thee, O silent mountain, | 35 |
| All things enduring, to be tranquil still! | |
| And now, with that fond reverence of feeling | |
| We owe whatever wakes our loftiest thought, | |
| I can but offer thee, in faint revealing, | |
| These idle thanks for all that thou hast brought. | 40 |
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