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There is confusion worse than death,

Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,

Long labour unto aged breath,

Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars

And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

VII.

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)

With half-dropt eyelids still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly

His waters from the purple hill—

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine

To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling

Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!

Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,

Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the

pine.

VIII.

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak:

The Lotos blows by every winding creek:

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone: Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow

Lotos-dust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foamfountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal

mind,

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted

lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music centred in a

doleful song

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of

wrong,

Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are

strong;

Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave

the soil,

Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring

toil,

Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whisper'd -down in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys

dwell,

Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and

wave and oar;

Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander

more.

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Sung by the morning star of song, who made

His music heard below;

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath

Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill

The spacious times of great Elizabeth

With sounds that echo still

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