<SPAN name="PERILS_OF_THE_SMALL_HOURS"></SPAN>PERILS OF THE SMALL HOURS.<br/>
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When life burns low as the fire in the grate<br/>
And all the evening's books are read,<br/>
I sit alone, save for the dead<br/>
And the lovers I have grown to hate.<br/>
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But all at once the narrow gloom<br/>
Of hatred and despair expands<br/>
In tenderness: thought stretches hands<br/>
To welcome to the midnight room<br/>
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Another presence:—a memory<br/>
Of how last year in the sunlit field,<br/>
Laughing, you suddenly revealed<br/>
Beauty in immortality.<br/>
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For so it is; a gesture strips<br/>
Life bare of all its make-believe.<br/>
All unprepared we may receive<br/>
Our casual apocalypse.<br/>
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Sheer beauty, then you seemed to stir<br/>
Unbodied soul; soul sleeps to-night,<br/>
And love comes, dimming spirit's sight,<br/>
When body plays interpreter.<br/>
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