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SONNET: 21, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Our love is not a fading, earthly flower
Last Line: The wind-flung leaves of heaven's palace-gate.


OUR love is not a fading, earthly flower:
Its winged seed dropped down from paradise,
And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower,
Doth momently to freshen beauty rise:
To us the leafless autumn is not bare,
Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green,
Our summer hearts make summer's fulness, where
No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen:
For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie,
Love, -- whose forgetfulness is beauty's death,
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I
Into the infinite freedom openeth,
And makes the body's dark and narrow grate
The wind-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.




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