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INTRODUCTION.
Another year—again our page
Goes wandering over sea and land,
And gathers, in its pilgrimage,
The shells on many a foreign strand;—
And asks their music and their dreams—
What of the future, and the past.
Waking the visionary gleams
Around the colder present cast.
Two worlds there are—one, chill and stern,
Is the external world alone,
Whose lessons all mankind must learn,
Whose troubles all mankind have known.
It were too harsh, it were too cold,
But for the world within that lies;
The spirit, by the clay controlled,
There yet asserts its native skies.
It is the minstrel’s part to fling
Around the present’s common cope,
The solemn hues on Memory’s wing,
The spiritual light of Hope.
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