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and with high purpose crowned; A song of soft presageful breath, Prefiguring all his love and faith in life and death; 7. Who should love two things only and only praise More than all else for ever: even the glory Of goodly beauty in women, whence all days Take light whereby death's self seems transitory; And loftier love than loveliest eyes can raise, Love that wipes off the miry stains and gory From Time's worn feet, besmirched on bloodred ways, And lightens with his light the night of story; Love that lifts up from dust Life, and makes darkness just, And purges as with fire of purgatory The dense disastrous air, To burn old falsehood bare And give the wind its ashes heaped and hoary; Love, that with eyes of ageless youth Sees on the breast of Freedom borne her nursling Truth. 8. For at his birth the sistering stars were one That flamed upon it as one fiery star; Freedom, whose light makes pale the mounting sun, And Song, whose fires are quenched when Freedom's are. Of all that love not liberty let none Love her that fills our lips with fire from far To mix with winds and seas in unison And sound athwart life's tideless harbour-bar Out where our songs fly free Across time's bounded sea, A boundless flight beyond the dim sun's car, Till all the spheres of night Chime concord round their flight Too loud for blasts of warring change to mar, From stars that sang for Homer's birth To these that gave our Landor welcome back from earth 9. Shine, as above his cradle, on his grave, Stars of our worship, lights of our desire! For never man that heard the world's wind rave To you was truer in trust of heart and lyre: Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave Beheld your flame against the wind burn higher: Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly wave With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire: No blast of all that blow Might bid the torch burn low That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre, Indomitable of storm, That now no flaws deform Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire, One light of godlike breath and flame, To write on heaven with man's most glorious names his name. 10. The very dawn was dashed with stormy dew And freaked with fire as when God's hand would mar Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue Deep heaven was kindled round her thun
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