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98
Sunday up the River.

Float as beautiful, strange and grand
As pencilled palm-trees, every line
Mystic with a grace divine,
In our dreams of the holy Eastern Land.

There is not a cloud in the sky;
The vague vast grey
Melts into azure dim on high.
Warmth, and languor, and infinite peace!
Surely the young Day
Hath fallen into a vision and a trance,
And his burning flight doth cease.

Yet look how here and there
Soft curves, fine contours, seem to swim,
Half emerging, wan and dim,
Into the quiet air:
Like statues growing slowly, slowly out
From the great vault of marble; here a limb,
And there a feature, but the rest all doubt.

Then the sculpturing sunbeams smite,
And the forms start forth to the day;
And the breath of the morning sweepeth light
The luminous dust away: