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New
York Nocturnes and Other Poems
by
Charles G.D. Roberts
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The
Hermit
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Above
the blindness of content,
The ignorance of ease,
Inhabiting within his soul
A shrine of memories,
Between the silences of sleep
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5 |
Attentively
he hears
The endless crawling sob and strain,
The spending of the years.
He sees the lapsing stream go by
His unperturbed face,
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10 |
Out
of a dark, into a dark,
Across a lighted space.
He calls it Life, this lighted space
Upon the moving flood.
He sees the water white with tears,
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15 |
| He
sees it red with blood.
And many specks upon the tide
He sees and marks by name,—
Motes of a day, and fools of Fate,
And challengers of fame;
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20 |
With here a people, there a babe,
A blossom, or a crown,—
They whirl a little, gleam, and pass,
Or in the eddies drown.
He waits. He waits one day to see
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25 |
The
lapsing of the stream,
The eddying forms, the darknesses,
Dissolve into a dream. |
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