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HUSHED with broad sunlight lies the hill, | |
And, minuting the long days loss, | |
The cedars shadow, slow and still, | |
Creeps oer its dial of gray moss. | |
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Warm noon brims full the valleys cup. | 5 |
The aspens leaves are scarce astir; | |
Only the little mill sends up | |
Its busy, never-ceasing burr. | |
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Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems | |
The road along the mill-ponds brink, | 10 |
From neath the arching barberry-stems, | |
My footstep scares the shy chewink. | |
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Beneath a bony buttonwood | |
The mills red door lets forth the din; | |
The whitened miller, dust-imbued, | 15 |
Flits past the square of dark within. | |
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No mountain torrents strength is here; | |
Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, | |
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, | |
And gently waits the millers will. | 20 |
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Swift slips Undine along the race | |
Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, | |
Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, | |
And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round. | |
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The miller dreams not at what cost | 25 |
The quivering millstones hum and whirl, | |
Nor how for every turn are tost | |
Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. | |
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But Summer cleared my happier eyes | |
With drops of some celestial juice, | 30 |
To see how Beauty underlies | |
Forevermore each form of Use. | |
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And more: methought I saw that flood, | |
Which now so dull and darkling steals, | |
Thick, here and there, with human blood, | 35 |
To turn the worlds laborious wheels. | |
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No more than doth the miller there, | |
Shut in our several cells, do we | |
Know with what waste of beauty rare | |
Moves every days machinery. | 40 |
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Surely the wiser time shall come | |
When this fine overplus of might, | |
No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, | |
Shall leap to music and to light. | |
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In that new childhood of the Earth | 45 |
Life of itself shall dance and play, | |
Fresh blood in Times shrunk veins make mirth, | |
And labor meet delight half-way. | |
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