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A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
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To meet an antique book,
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In just the dress his century wore;
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A privilege, I think,
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His venerable hand to take,
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And warming in our own,
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A passage back, or two, to make
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To times when he was young.
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His quaint opinions to inspect,
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His knowledge to unfold
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On what concerns our mutual mind,
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The literature of old;
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What interested scholars most,
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What competitions ran
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When Plato was a certainty.
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And Sophocles a man;
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When Sappho was a living girl,
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And Beatrice wore
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The gown that Dante deified.
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Facts, centuries before,
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He traverses familiar,
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As one should come to town
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And tell you all your dreams were true;
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He lived where dreams were sown.
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His presence is enchantment,
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You beg him not to go;
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Old volumes shake their vellum heads
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And tantalize, just so.
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Much madness is divinest sense
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To a discerning eye;
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Much sense the starkest madness.
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'T is the majority
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In this, as all, prevails.
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Assent, and you are sane;
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Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,
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And handled with a chain.
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I asked no other thing,
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No other was denied.
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I offered Being for it;
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The mighty merchant smiled.
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Brazil? He twirled a button,
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Without a glance my way:
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"But, madam, is there nothing else
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That we can show to-day?"
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EXCLUSION.
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The soul selects her own society,
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Then shuts the door;
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On her divine majority
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Obtrude no more.
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Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
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At her low gate;
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Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
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Upon her mat.
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I've known her from an ample nation
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Choose one;
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Then close the valves of her attention
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Like stone.
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THE SECRET.
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