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Until the overburdened brain,

Weary with labor, faint with pain, Like a jarred pendulum, retain Only its motion, not its power, Remember, in that perilous hour, When most afflicted and oppressed From labor there shall come forth

And if a more auspicious fate
On thy advancing steps await,

Still let it ever be thy pride
To linger by the laborer's side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
of the poor,

Of the great army

O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous mo

Nor to thyself the task shall be

Without reward; for thou shalt learn

The wisdom early to discern

True beauty in utility;

As great Pythagoras of yore,

Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,

Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.

Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.
Thy destiny remains untold;
For, like Acestes' shaft of old,

The swift thought kindles as it flies,

And burns to ashes in the skies.

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THE OCCULTATION OF ORIO

I SAW, as in a dream sublime, The balance in the hand of Time. O'er East and West its beam impen And day, with all its hours of light, Was slowly sinking out of sight, While, opposite, the scale of night Silently with the stars ascended.

Like the astrologers of eld,
In that bright vision I beheld

THE OCCULTATION OF ORION.

57

Greater and deeper mysteries.
I saw, with its celestial keys,
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Æolian lyre,
Rising through all its sevenfold bars,
From earth unto the fixed stars.
And through the dewy atmosphere,
Not only could I see, but hear,
Its wondrous and harmonious strings,
In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,
From Dian's circle light and near,
Onward to vaster and wider rings,
Where, chanting through his beard of snows,
Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes,

And down the sunless realms of space

Reverberates the thunder of his bass.

Beneath the sky's triumphal arch
This music sounded like a march,

And with its chorus seemed to be

Preluding some great tragedy.
Sirius was rising in the east ;
And, slow ascending one by one,
The kindling constellations shone.
Begirt with many a blazing star,
Stood the great giant Algebar,
Orion, hunter of the beast!

His sword hung gleaming by his side
And, on his arm, the lion's hide
Scattered across the midnight air

The golden radiance of its hair.

The moon was pallid, but not faint;
And beautiful as some fair saint,
Serenely moving on her way
In hours of trial and dismay.
As if she heard the voice of God,
Unharmed with naked feet she trod

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