ODE
TO DROWSIHOOD
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BREATHER
of honeyed breath upon my face!
Teller of balmy tales! Weaver
of dreams!
Sweet conjurer of palpitating
gleams
And peopled shadows trooping into place
In
purple streams
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Between
the drooped lid and the drowsy eye!
Moth-winged seducer, dusky-soft
and brown,
Of bubble gifts and bodiless minstrelsy
Lavish enough! Of rest the
restful crown !
At whose behest are closed the lips that sigh,
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And
weary heads lie down.
Thee, Nodding Spirit! Magic Comforter!
Thee, with faint mouth half
speechless, I invoke,
And straight uplooms through
the dead centuries’ smoke
The agéd Druid in his robe of fur,
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Beneath
the oak
Where hang uncut the paly mistletoes.
The mistletoe dissolves
to Indian willow,
Glassing its red stems in the stream that flows
Through the broad interval;
a lazy billow
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Flung
from my oar lifts the long grass that grows
To be the Naiad’s pillow.
The startled meadow-hen floats off, to sink
Into remoter shades and
ferny glooms;
The great bees drone about
the thick pea-blooms;
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The
linkéd bubblings of the bobolink,
With
warm perfumes
From the broad-flowered wild parsnip, drown my brain;
The grakles bicker in the
alder boughs;
The grasshoppers pipe out their thin refrain
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That
with intenser heat the noon endows:
Then thy weft weakens, and I wake again
Out of my dreamful drowse.
Ah! fetch thy poppy-baths, juices exprest
In fervid sunshine, where
the Javan palm
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Stirs
scarce awakened from its odorous calm
By the enervate wind, that sinks to rest
Amid
the balm
And sultry silence, murmuring, half asleep,
Cool fragments of the ocean’s
foamy roar,
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And
of the surge’s mighty sobs that keep
Forever yearning up the
golden shore,
Mingled with song of Nereids that leap
Where the curled crests
downpour.
Who sips thy wine may float in Baić’ skies,
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Or
flushed Maggiore’s ripples, mindless made
Of storming troubles hard
to be allayed.
Who eats thy berries, for his ears and eyes
May
vineyard shade
Melt with soft Tuscan, glow with arms and lips
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Cream-white
and crimson, making mock at reason.
Thy balm on brows by care uneaten drips;
I have thy favors, but I
fear thy treason.
Fain would I hold thee by the dusk wing-tips
Against a grievous season.
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