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Rh In a week they came and had it from my fingers And looked up at me while I pinched their bills And made them sneeze. Count Pretzel's Carmichael Had said they were not ordinary Birds At all,—and they are not: they are the Fates, Foredoomed of their own insufficiency To be assimilated.—Do not think, Because in my contented isolation It suits me at this time to be jocose, That I am nailing reason to the cross, Or that I set the bauble and the bells Above the crucible; for I do nought, Say nought, but with an ancient levity That is the forbear of all earnestness.

"The cross, I said.—I had a dream last night: A dream not like to any other dream That I remember. I was all alone, Sitting as I do now beneath a tree, But looking not, as I am looking now, Against the sunlight. There was neither sun Nor moon, nor do I think of any stars; Yet there was light, and there were cedar trees, And there were sycamores. I lay at rest, Or should have seemed at rest, within a trough Between two giant roots. A weariness