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ON A WARM DAY IN WINTER.

WHEN some poor heart that lives a-chill and dull,

Frozen long since by hardness and neglect,

Is stirred by gracious pity, dropped upon it

By one whose careless tenderness, half feigned,

Would be aroused by some ill-treated beast,

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Or who would sweetly lift a drowning fly

From out his peril, set him in the sun,

And watch him till he flew, - it throbs and burns

And dreams and hopes, till, all in vain, it sees

Its fancied sunrise but a Northern Light

That coldly waves its wondrous lamp aloft

And then departs, leaving more bleak and cold

The still, far-reaching waste.

And so the trees

That bud again for one soft week in fall

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