O GREAT Stars, aflame with awful beauty! | |
| O great Sea, with glittering heaving breast! | |
| Stars, that march all calm in lines of duty; | |
| Sea, that swayest to stern law’s behest;— | |
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| Mighty in your unimpassioned splendour, | 5 |
| Ye are filling all my puny soul | |
| With the longing this vexed self to render | |
| Wholly to calm Duty’s sure control. | |
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| It were restful so to let the ruling | |
| Of the mightier law sway all the life, | 10 |
| Eager will and passionate spirit schooling, | |
| Till unfelt the pains of lesser strife. | |
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| Yet, O Stars, your quivering shafts unheeding | |
| On these tangled human sorrows smite; | |
| Merciless Stars! that on hearts crushed and bleeding | 15 |
| Pour the sharp stings of your bleak cold light. | |
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| Yet, O Sea, that glittering breast is heaving, | |
| All unconscious of the life it rears, | |
| Shouting in the mirth of its bereaving, | |
| Laughing o’er a thousand widows’ tears. | 20 |
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| No! I ask not for a life high lifted | |
| O’er the changeful passions of mankind, | |
| Undistracted, self-contained, and gifted | |
| With a force to feebler issues blind. | |
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| Rather fill my soul to overflowing | 25 |
| With the tide of this world’s grief and wrong; | |
| Let me suffer; though it be well knowing | |
| Suffering thus, I am not wholly strong. | |
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| Let what grandeur crown the life of others, | |
| Let what light on lone endurance shine; | 30 |
| I will set myself beside my brothers, | |
| And their toils and troubles shall be mine! | |
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