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Part 38

Oracles From the Poets: a Fanciful Diversion for the Drawing Room · Caroline Howard Gilman — chapter 38 of 70 · ~508 words · public domain

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S. G. BULFINCH.

14. When Apollo doth devise new apparelling for western skies.

KEATS.

15. Ere the evening lamps are lighted, And like phantoms, grim and tall, Shadows from the fitful fire-light, Dance upon the parlor wall.

LONGFELLOW.

16. When like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arises on the murky earth.

SHELLEY.

17. Morning in your garden, when each leaf of crisped green Hangs tremulous in diamonds, with em'rald rays between. It is the birth of nature, baptized in early dew, The plants look meekly up and smile as if their God they knew.

MRS. GILMAN.

18. Ah, let the gay the roseate morning hail, When, in the various blooms of light array'd, She bids fresh beauty live along the vale, And rapture tremble in the vocal shade. Sweet is the lucid morning's opening flower, Her choral melodies benignly rise; Yet dearer to your soul the shadowy hour At which her blossoms close, her music dies.

MISS H. M. WILLIAMS.

19. The middle watch of a summer's night, When earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Naught is seen in the vault on high, But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood, which rolls its milky hue, A river of white on the welkin blue.

DRAKE.

20. When little birds begin discourse, In quick, low voices, ere the streaming light Pours on their nests from out the day's fresh source.

R. H. DANA.

21. Morning, when the sun pours his first light Amid a forest, and with ray aslant, Entering its depth, illumes the branchless pines, Brightening their bark, tinging with redder hue Its rusty stains, and casting on the earth Long lines of shadow, where they rise erect Like pillars of a temple.

SOUTHEY--Madoc.

22. Sunrise, slanting on a city, when The early risen poor are coming in, Duly and cheerfully to toil, and up Rises the hammer's clink, with the far hum Of moving wheels, and multitudes astir, And all that in a city murmur swells.

N. P. WILLIS.

23. When the west Opens her golden bowers of rest, And a moist radiance from the skies Shoots trembling down, as from the eyes Of some meek penitent, whose last Bright hours atone for dark ones past, And whose sweet tears o'er wrong forgiven, Shine, as they fall, with light from heaven.

MOORE--Lalla Rookh.

24. The midnight hour, when Slow through the studious gloom, thy pausing eye, Led by the glimmering taper, moves around The sacred volumes of the dead.

AKENSIDE--Pleasures of the Imagination.

25. When evening's virgin Queen Sits on her fringed throne serene, And mingling whispers, rising near, Steal on the still reposing ear.

H. K. WHITE.

26. When the moon riseth as if dreaming, Treading with still white feet the lulled sea.

From the Etonian.

27. When day hath put on his jacket, and around His burning bosom button'd it with stars.

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