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Vesalius In Zante

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
I loved light ever, light in eye and brain—
No tapers mirrored in long palace floors,
Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles,
But just the common dusty wind-blown day
That roofs earth’s millions.

O, too long I walked
In that thrice-sifted air that princes breathe,
Nor felt the heaven-wide jostling of the winds
And all the ancient outlawry of earth!
Now let me breathe and see.

This pilgrimage
They call a penance—let them call it that!
I set my face to the East to shrive my soul
Of mortal sin? So be it. If my blade
Once questioned living flesh, if once I tore
The pages of the Book in opening it,
See what the torn page yielded ere the light

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poem by Edith Wharton
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The Life And Death Of Tom Thumb

In Arthur's court Tom Thumb did live,
A man of mickle might ;
The best of all the table round,
And eke a doughty knight.
His stature but an inch in height,
Or quarter of a span :
Then think you not this little knight
Was proved a valiant man ?

His father was a ploughman plain,
His mother milk'd the cow,
Yet how that they might have a son
They knew not what to do :
Until such time this good old man
To learned Merlin goes,
And there to him his deep desires
In secret manner shows.

How in his heart he wish'd to have
A child, in time to come,

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poem by Anonymous Olde English
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Hertha

I AM that which began;
   Out of me the years roll;
   Out of me God and man;
   I am equal and whole;
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.

   Before ever land was,
   Before ever the sea,
   Or soft hair of the grass,
   Or fair limbs of the tree,
Or the flesh-colour'd fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in
me.

   First life on my sources
   First drifted and swam;
   Out of me are the forces
   That save it or damn;
Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird: before God was, I
am.

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poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Rebekkah

When Abraham was weak and old
he forced his slave to swear an oath,
while grasping of his member hold:
“Make sure that Isaac plights his troth
to someone from my ancient clan;
from Canaanites don’t choose a damsel;
in Canaan I believe each man
to be a mamzer, girl a mamzelle.”
Everybody knows a mamzer
is repulsive to the Jews,
a cockroach rather than Greg Samsa,
but mamzelle is a word I choose
instead of mademoiselle, for rhyming;
a lot of members of my tribe
like them a lot when they’re good-timing,
though outlawed by the Bible scribe.

The slave asked God to make it clear,
by giving him a secret sign:
“The first young girl who will appear

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poem by Gershon Hepner
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The Shepherds Calendar - March

March month of 'many weathers' wildly comes
In hail and snow and rain and threatning hums
And floods: while often at his cottage door
The shepherd stands to hear the distant roar
Loosd from the rushing mills and river locks
Wi thundering sound and over powering shocks
And headlong hurry thro the meadow brigs
Brushing the leaning sallows fingering twigs
In feathery foam and eddy hissing chase
Rolling a storm oertaken travellers pace
From bank to bank along the meadow leas
Spreading and shining like to little seas
While in the pale sunlight a watery brood
Of swopping white birds flock about the flood
Yet winter seems half weary of its toil
And round the ploughman on the elting soil
Will thread a minutes sunshine wild and warm
Thro the raggd places of the swimming storm
And oft the shepherd in his path will spye
The little daisey in the wet grass lye

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poem by John Clare
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Hezekiah

From the bleak Beach and broad expanse of sea,
To lofty Salem, Thought direct thy way;
Mount thy light chariot, move along the plains,
And end thy flight where Hezekiah reigns.

How swiftly thought has pass'd from land to land,
And quite outrun Time's meas'ring glass of sand,
Great Salem's walls appear and I resort
To view the state of Hezekiah's court.

Well may that king a pious verse inspire,
Who cleans'd the temple, who reviv'd the choir,
Pleas'd with the service David fix'd before,
That heav'nly musick might on earth adore.
Deep-rob'd in white, he made the Levites stand
With Cymbals, Harps, and Psaltries in their hand;
He gave the Priests their trumpets, prompt to raise
The tuneful soul, by force of sound to praise.
A skilful master for the song he chose,
The songs were David's these, and Asaph's those.

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poem by Thomas Parnell
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CIV. Psalm

My soul exalt the Lord with Hymns of praise:
O Lord my God, how boundless is thy might?
Whose Throne of State is cloath'd with glorious rays,
And round about hast rob'd thy self with light.
Who like a curtain hast the Heavens display'd,
And in the watry Roofs thy Chambers laid.

Whose chariots are the thickned clouds above,
Who walk'st upon the winged winds below,
At whose command the airy Spirits move,
And fiery meteors their obedience show.
Who on this Base the earth didst firmly found,
And mad'st the deep to circumvest it round.

The waves that rise would drown the highest hill,
But at thy cheek they flie, and when they hear
Thy thundring voice, they post to do thy will,
And bound their furies in their proper sphere:
Where surging floods, and valing ebbs can tell,
That none beyond thy marks must sink or swell.

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poem by anonym, translated by Henry Wotton
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Canto III

THE ARGUMENT

An Owl instructed by the Night,
Cunningly counterfeits A Sprite :
In Pulpit close she lies Perdue,
And terrifies the Prelates Crew!
They Routed fly with heavy Clatter,
The Canto tells you, what's the matter ;
But Discord to Retrieve the sport
Rallies them soon in Warlike sort :
All Oppositions overpast,
They set the Pulpit up at last :
But fear not lest the Prelate Preacht in't ;
Alas he has a further reach in't !
To spight his Foes, yet for all's Feating,
The proof of th' Pudding's seen i'th' eating.

But Night in hast with her Dark Canopy,
Shrowding the viny Plains of Burgundy,
Flew back to th' City ; and as suddenly

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poem by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux from Le Lutrin
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Grandmother’s Teaching

``Grandmother dear, you do not know; you have lived the old-world life,
Under the twittering eaves of home, sheltered from storm and strife;
Rocking cradles, and covering jams, knitting socks for baby feet,
Or piecing together lavender bags for keeping the linen sweet:
Daughter, wife, and mother in turn, and each with a blameless breast,
Then saying your prayers when the nightfall came, and quietly dropping to rest.

``You must not think, Granny, I speak in scorn, for yours have been well-spent days,
And none ever paced with more faithful feet the dutiful ancient ways.
Grandfather's gone, but while he lived you clung to him close and true,
And mother's heart, like her eyes, I know, came to her straight from you.
If the good old times, at the good old pace, in the good old grooves would run,
One could not do better, I'm sure of that, than do as you all have done.

``But the world has wondrously changed, Granny, since the days when you were young;
It thinks quite different thoughts from then, and speaks with a different tongue.
The fences are broken, the cords are snapped, that tethered man's heart to home;
He ranges free as the wind or the wave, and changes his shore like the foam.
He drives his furrows through fallow seas, he reaps what the breakers sow,
And the flash of his iron flail is seen mid the barns of the barren snow.

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poem by Alfred Austin
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Old Spense

You've seen his place, I reckon, friend?
'Twas rather kind ov tryin'.
The way he made the dollars fly,
Such gimcrack things a-buyin'--
He spent a big share ov a fortin'
On pesky things that went a snortin'

And hollerin' over all the fields,
And ploughin' ev'ry furrow;
We sort ov felt discouraged, for
Spense wusn't one to borrow;
An' wus--the old chap wouldn't lend
A cent's wuth to his dearest friend!

Good land! the neighbours seed to wunst
Them snortin', screamin' notions
Wus jest enough tew drown the yearth
In wrath, like roarin' oceans,
'An' guess'd the Lord would give old Spense
Blue fits for fightin' Pruvidence!'

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poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford
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