Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/930

 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

750 Say not the Struggle Naught availeth

SAY not the struggle naught availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor failcth, And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,

And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the mam.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light;

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly' But westward, look, the land is bright'

��WALT WHITMAN 757 The Imprisoned Soul

AT the last, tenderly, From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house, From the clasp of the knitted locks from the keep of the

well-closed doors, Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;

With the key of softness unlock the locks with a whisper Set ope the doors, O soul '

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