<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2>VII.<br/><small>DOVES.</small></h2>
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<div class="verse">Ah, if man’s boast and man’s advance be vain!</div>
<div class="verse">And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home,</div>
<div class="verse">And the lone Tree, foreknow it, and the Dome,</div>
<div class="verse">That monstrous island of the middle main;</div>
<div class="verse">If each inheritor must sink again</div>
<div class="verse">Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb</div>
<div class="verse">Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?—</div>
<div class="verse">I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain.</div>
<div class="verse">What folly lies in forecasts and in fears!</div>
<div class="verse">Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune,</div>
<div class="verse">Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul’s</div>
<div class="verse">Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon,</div>
<div class="verse">And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls.</div>
<div class="verse">“God keeps,” I said, “our little flock of years.”</div>
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