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terrible thing! Sounds no sense to its ear will bring. Hath God forgotten it, alas! Lost in eternity's lumber room? Will the wave of his Spirit never pass Over it through the insensate gloom? It lies alone in its lifeless world, As a frozen bud on the earth lies curled; Sightless and soundless, without a cry, On the flat of its own vacuity. Up, brothers, up! for a storm is nigh; We will smite the wing up the steepest sky; Through the rushing air We will climb the stair That to heaven from the vaults doth leap; We will measure its height By the strokes of our flight, Its span by the tempest's sweep. What matter the hail or the clashing winds! We know by the tempest we do not lie Dead in the pits of eternity. Brothers, let us be strong in our minds, Lest the storm should beat us back, Or the treacherous calm sink from beneath our wings, And lower us gently from our track To the depths of forgotten things. Up, brothers, up! 'tis the storm or we! 'Tis the storm or God for the victory! A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM. THE OUTER DREAM. Young, as the day's first-born Titanic brood, Lifting their foreheads jubilant to heaven, Rose the great mountains on my opening dream. And yet the aged peace of countless years Reposed on every crag and precipice Outfacing ruggedly the storms that swept Far overhead the sheltered furrow-vales; Which smiled abroad in green as the clouds broke Drifting adown the tide of the wind-waves, Till shattered on the mountain rocks. Oh! still, And cold and hard to look upon, like men Who do stern deeds in times of turbulence, Quell the hail-rattle with their granite brows, And let the thunder burst and pass away-- They too did gather round sky-dwelling peaks The trailing garments of the travelling sun, Which he had lifted from his ocean-bed, And swept along his road. They rent them down In scattering showers upon the trees and grass, In noontide rains with heavy ringing drops, Or in still twilight moisture tenderly. And from their sides were born the gladsome streams; Some creeping gently out in tiny springs, As they were just created, scarce a foot From the hill's surface, in the matted roots Of plants, whose green betrays the secret birth; Some hurrying forth from caverns deep and dark, Upfilling to the brim a basin huge, Thick covered with soft moss, greening the wave, As evermore it welled over the edge Upon the rocks below in boiling heaps; Fit basin for a demi-god at m
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