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[172] So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town,
     From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down.
Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth
     And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth.

Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres of the mind,
     Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the darkness undefined;
Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain,
     And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.

In the dark we cry like children; and no answer from on high
     Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white wings downward fly;
But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, and not to sight,
     And our prayers themselves drive backward all the spirits of the night!

1857.

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1857 AD (1)
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