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—Oh, but for lonely hours like these, Would every finer current freeze; Those kindlier impulses that glow, Those clear and diamond streams that flow Only in crystal, while their birth Is all unsoil'd with stain of earth. Ever the Lover hath gainsay'd The creed his once religion made,— That pure, that high, that holy creed, Without which love is vain indeed; While that which was a veiled shrine, Whose faith was only not divine, Becomes a vague, forgotten dream,— A thing of scorn—an idle theme. Denied, degraded, and represt, Love dies beneath the heartless jest.