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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NEPENTHE by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER

Poet Analysis

First Line: I HAVE A WORLD, A WORLD WHICH IS ALL MY OWN
Last Line: THERE IN THAT WORLD SO SOLELY AND SO COMPLETELY MINE.
I have a world, a world which is all my own,
Which you, nor foe, nor friend, nor kith, nor kin,
Nor even my own fiery soul, when churlish grown,
Has entered, or shall ever pass therein;
But when all of care and strife aside are thrown
And I am free, then I am there, and am not alone.

No, not alone, for standing there inviting me
On the threshold is God's image made of pearl,
And I relive the elden time with that purity --
There with a queenly shrined and sainted girl,
I press the green beneath the ancient tree,
And vow the vows and redream the mystery.
What though the real did happen years ago!
What though our lives are wide, and still diverge?
And both of us are wed? Admit it's so.
Then sitting here to-night, will you, sir, urge
We dare not live that past in all its glorious glow?
Well! you may be good, but there are things you do not know.
To-day I fight the manly pitted fight of life,
I give back deftly hard dealt blow for blow,
To-day is she the mother and the patient wife,
Taking life a fact from fates that made it so;
But lo! to-night I quit the struggling strife,
She is young again, heart-full, and lips are rife.
The long tilled turf is rich again and green --
The long felled oak extends its hugest bough,
And we are there as lang syne we have been,
Giving troth for troth, and plighting vow for vow --
Holy vows for aye upon that belted green,
Where no gray ghosts dare thrust themselves between.

Yet in the morn, amid the reckless rush of life,
First in the duties and foremost in the scene,
She, the fond mother and most loyal wife --
She the peerless of all that's goodly will be seen;
And girded, I shall marshal for the strife
Without a thought of the glorious 'might have been.'

And you do star-ward point and bid me twine
The hopes and promise round the crumbling heart.
Well, I have tried, wept and watched to read the sign,
But heaven, my friend, -- nay, now, do not start --
But heaven -- my heaven at least, is in that sweet lang syne --
There in that world so solely and so completely mine.



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