| Free Will |
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Dear are some hidden things
My soul has sealed in silence; past delights;
Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,
Remembered in the nights.
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But my best treasures are
Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;
Yet O! profounder hoards oracular
No reliquaries hold.
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There lie my trespasses,
Abjured but not disowned. I’ll not accuse
Determinism, nor, as the Master* says,
Charge even “the poor Deuce.”
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Under my hand they lie,
My very own, my proved iniquities;
And though the glory of my life go by
I hold and garner these.
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How else, how otherwhere,
How otherwise, shall I discern and grope
For lowliness? How hate, how love, how dare
How weep, how hope?
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* George Meredith.
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