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(From Gabriel)
IN a fair wood like this, where the beeches are growing, | |
| Brave Robin Hood hunted in days of old; | |
| Down his broad shoulders his brown locks fell flowing, | |
| His cap was of green, with a tassel of gold. | |
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| His eye was as blue as the sky in midsummer, | 5 |
| Ruddy his cheek as the oak-leaves in June, | |
| Hearty his voice as he hailed the new-comer, | |
| Tender to maidens in changeable tune. | |
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| His step had a strength, and his smile had a sweetness, | |
| His spirit was wrought of the sun and the breeze, | 10 |
| He moved as a man framed in nature’s completeness, | |
| And grew unabashed with the growth of the trees. | |
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| And ever to poets, who walk in the gloaming, | |
| His horn is still heard in the prime of the year; | |
| Last eve he went with us, unseen, in our roaming, | 15 |
| And thrilled with his presence the shy troops of deer. | |
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| When the warm sun sank down in a golden declining, | |
| And night clomb the slopes and the firs to their tops, | |
| And the faint stars to meet her did brighten their shining, | |
| And the heat was refined into diamond drops; | 20 |
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| Then Robin stole forth in his quaint forest-fashion,— | |
| For dear to the heart of all poets is he,— | |
| And in mystical whispers awakened the passion | |
| Which slumbers within for a life that were free. | |
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| We follow the lead unawares of his spirit, | 25 |
| He tells us the tales which we heard in past time; | |
| Ah! why should we forfeit this earth we inherit | |
| For lives which we cannot expand into rhyme! | |
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| I think, as I lie in the shade of the beeches, | |
| How lived and how loved this old hero of song; | 30 |
| I would we could follow the lesson he teaches, | |
| And dwell, as he dwelt, these wild thickets among. | |
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| At least for a while, till we caught up the meaning | |
| The beeches breathe out in the wealth of their growth, | |
| Width in their nobleness, love in their leaning, | 35 |
| And peace at the heart from the fulness of both. | |
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