Page:Poems Hoffman.djvu/469

O'er my broad brow are bending
Branches, their blooms suspending
Fair, fragile beauty blending
 With grandest symmetry,
While a blue breaker tosses
To me her tangled mosses
Fashioned in wreaths and crosses
 Flowers of the land and sea.

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Steady the sculptor's chisel
Surer than deadly missile
Moves while his careless whistle
 Mockingly floats o'er all,
Dark earth, oh, be my pillow!
Hide me, oh drooping willow!
Chant dirges faithful billow,
 Great is my fall!

Held like a captive quaking,
No strife for freedom making,
Never a fetter breaking,
 Broken, defaced and scarred,
Man, who to earth hath brought me,
Man, who my ruin wrought me,
Man, who with shame hath fraught me,
 Man, who my beauty marred,

Brief are thy generations,
Boastful and weak thy nations,
Transient thy best creations,
 Thy longest life a span;
Owning in all thy science
Mine as a race of giants,
Darest thou our defiance

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