| Choose Something Like a Star
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| O Star (the fairest one in sight)
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| Say something to us we can learn by heart
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| .the mob is swayed
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| To carry praise or blame too far
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| We may choose something like a star
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| To stay our minds on
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| And be staid
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| -- Original poem --
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| O Star (the fairest one in sight)
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| We grant your loftiness the right
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| To some obscurity of cloud --
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| It will not do to say of night
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| Since dark is what brings out your light
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| Some mystery becomes the proud
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| But to be wholly taciturn
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| In your reserve is not allowed
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| Say something to us we can learn
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| By heart and when alone repeat
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| Say something! |
| And it says «I burn.»
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| But say with what degree of heat
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| Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade
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| Use language we can comprehend
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| Tell us what elements you blend
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| It gives us strangely little aid
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| But does tell something in the end
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| And steadfast as Keats' Eremite
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| Not even stooping from its sphere
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| It asks a little of us here
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| It asks of us a certain height
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| So when at times the mob is swayed
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| To carry praise or blame too far
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| We may choose something like a star
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| To stay our minds on and be staid |