A Poet’s Fancies
VIII
A Song of Derivations |
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I come from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth,
My immortality is there.
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I am like the blossom of an hour.
But long, long vanished sun and shower
A woke my breath i’ the young world’s air;
I track the past back everywhere
Through seed and flower and seed and flower.
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Or I am like a stream that flows
Full of the cold springs that arose
In morning lands, in distant hills;
And down the plain my channel fills
With melting of forgotten snows.
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Voices, I have not heard, possessed
My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed
With relics of the far unknown.
And mixed with memories not my own
The sweet streams throng into my breast.
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Before this life began to be,
The happy songs that wake in me
Woke long ago and far apart.
Heavily on this little heart
Presses this immortality.
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