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CHAPTER III.
ALTERATION.
My heart hath turned aside
From its early dreams;
To me their course has been
Like mountain streams.
Bright and pure they left
Their place of birth;
Soon on every wave
Came taints of earth.
Weeds grew upon the banks,
And, as the waters swept,
A bad or useless part
Of all they kept,
Till it reached the plain below,
An altered thing
Bearing gloomy trace,—
Of its wandering.
Altered from Stanzas in The Amulet, 1826
Not in Blanchard
