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The guests are scattered through the land;
For the eye altering alters all;
The senses roll themselves in fear,
And the fiat earth becomes a ball.
The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away,
A desert vast without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink,
And a dark desert all around:
The honey of her infant lips,
The bread and wine of her sweet smile,
The wild game off her roving eye,
Do him to infancy beguile.
For as he eats and drinks he grows
Younger and younger every day,
And on the desert wild they both
Wander in terror and dismay.
Like the wild stag she flees away;
Her fear plants many a thicket wild,
While he pursues her night and day,
By various arts of love beguiled.
By various arts of love and hate,
Till the wild desert's planted o'er
With labyrinths of wayward love,
Where roam the lion, wolf, and boar.
Till he becomes a wayward babe,
And she a weeping woman old;
Then many a lover wanders here,
The sun and stars are nearer rolled;
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