But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight.
Sob, heavy world, Sob as you spin Mantled in mist, remote from the happy.
O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me What this strong music in the soul may be! What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, This beautiful and beauty-making power.
You stars that reigned at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist, Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud, That when you vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to heaven.
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.
Theyare sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 578 Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw, The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread, Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said, But that two-handed engine at the door, Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
Unless we change our ways and our direction, our greatness as a nation will soon be a footnote in the history books, a distant memory of an offshore island, lost in the mist of time like Camelot, remembered kindly for its noble past.
She was cut off fromthe past and therefore did not live in the present. But suddenly, as she stood close against a pine tree and breathed in its sharp, bitter scent, a clear space opened to her childhood, as though a wind had sprung fromthesea, clearing a mist.It wasnot a memory from the past, it was the past itself, as alive, as real; and she knew that she and the child of forty years ago were the same person.
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