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In Memoriam A.H.H.

         
            CV.
             
      To-night ungather’d let us leave
          This laurel, let this holly stand:
          We live within the stranger’s land,
      And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.

      Our father’s dust is left alone
          And silent under other snows:
          There in due time the woodbine blows,
      The violet comes, but we are gone.

      No more shall wayward grief abuse
          The genial hour with mask and mime;
          For change of place, like growth of time,
      Has broke the bond of dying use.

      Let cares that petty shadows cast,
          By which our lives are chiefly proved,
          A little spare the night I loved,
      And hold it solemn to the past.

      But let no footstep beat the floor,
          Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
          For who would keep an ancient form
      Thro’ which the spirit breathes no more?

      Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
          Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown;
          No dance, no motion, save alone
      What lightens in the lucid east

      Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
          Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
          Run out your measured arcs, and lead
      The closing cycle rich in good.
       


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