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My pulses throbbed, my heart beat high, A flush of dizzy ecstasy Crimsoned my cheek; I felt warm tears Dimming my sight, yet was it sweet, My wild heart’s most bewildering beat, Consciousness, without hopes or fears, Of a new power within me waking, Like light before the morn’s full breaking. I left the boat—the crowd: my mood Made my soul pant for solitude. Amid my palace halls was once, The most peculiarly my own: The roof was blue and fretted gold, The floor was of the Parian stone, Shining like snow, as only meet For the light tread of fairy feet;