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848–879]

Hath open eye;

Their quickly ruffling mind

Quivers in lightest wind,

Sleepless in slumber new danger to spy.

Think, O my lord, of thy path,

Secretly look forth afar,

What wilt thou do for thy need?

How with the wise wilt thou care?

If toward the nameless thy heart

Chooseth this merciful part,

Huge are the dangers that drift.

The wind is fair, my son, the wind is fair,

The man is dark and helpless, stretched in night.

(O kind, warm sleep that calmest human care!)

Powerless of hand and foot and ear and sight,

Blind, as one lying in the house of death.

(Think well if here thou utterest timely breath.)

This, O my son, is all my thought can find,

Best are the toils that without frightening bind.

. Hush! One word more were madness. He revives.

His eye hath motion. He uplifts his head.

. Fair daylight following sleep, and ye, dear friends,

Faithful beyond all hope in tending me!

I never could have dreamed that thou, dear youth,

Couldst thus have borne my sufferings and stood near

So full of pity to relieve my pain.

Not so the worthy generals of the host;—

This princely patience was not theirs to show.

Only thy noble nature, nobly sprung,

Made light of all the trouble, though oppressed

With fetid odours and unceasing cries.

And now, since this my plague would seem to yield

Some pause and brief forgetfulness of pain,

With thine own hand, my son, upraise me here,

And set me on my feet, that, when my strength