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Spenser has Britomart on guard in the enchanter’s house

     Reading over every iron door ‘Be bold’,

And on and on ‘Be bold’, until over the last door

    ‘Be not too bold.’

                               One might vary it: ‘Be plain,

Be sad, true, deep’—see with the addition how they do.

     But for the bundle we have here (including

Not only the diary and letters found in a loft

    Among lumber and waste paper by a boy

Who played and rummaged) the only right word is ‘Be late.’

    Which is, even with ‘Be not too late’, I daresay

No famous old device, but vows to serve Eliza

    And Yorick and the Journal to Eliza,

And will fit it down to the opening, out of things unknown

    And just as he left it, the first pages gone,

Sent after her; when Sterne, worn by so many fevers

    But most that of his heart, sits with her picture

Alone, pale and bereft, in Bond Street:

                                                             ‘O my Bramine,

    my friend, my helpmate!’

                                              The Lord Chatham her ship,

East Indiaman waiting in the Downs, the first fair wind

    Proceeding, had now borne off, stood off with her

And his letters of two weeks, farewells each tenderer

    And wilder than the last, and the last telling

How ‘the blood broke from his heart’ and ‘this poor fine-spun frame

    gave way … I fell asleep at last through weakness,

and dreamt thou camest into the Room where I was sitting,

    carrying a shawl. My spirit had flown to thee

with tidings of my fate—you came to bid me comfort,

    folded the shawl about my Waist and kneeling

supplicated my blessing …

                                          I awoke but Oh my God,

    how broken, sobbing—the bosom of my shirt

brine-wet, steep’d in my tears!’

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