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And onward, and across the setting sun,

Across the boundless plain,

The column and its broader shadow run, Till thought pursues in vain.

The vision vanishes! These walls again
Shut out the lurid sun,

Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain;
The half-hour's sand is run!

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

BLACK shadows fall

From the lindens tall,

That lift aloft their massive wall

Against the southern sky;

And from the realms

Of the shadowy elms

A tide-like darkness overwhelms

The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,

And everywhere

A warm, soft, vapor fills the air,
And distant sounds seem near;

And above, in the light

Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight Through the dewy atmosphere.

hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,

But their forms I cannot see.

O, say not so!

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe

Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs

Of the poet's songs,

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,

The sound of winged words.

This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions, fly,

Seeking a warmer clime.

From their distant flight

Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

THE OPEN WINDOW.

THE old house by the lindens
Stood silent in the shade,

And on the gravelled pathway
The light and shadow played.

I saw the nursery windows

Wide

open to the air;

But the faces of the children,

They were no longer there.

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