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 Russell Kincaid by Edgar Lee Masters 
						In the last spring I ever knew,In those last days,
 I sat in the forsaken orchard
 Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered
 The hills at Miller's Ford;
 Just to muse on the apple tree
 With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,
 And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms
 Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,
 Never to grow in fruit.
 And there was I with my spirit girded
 By the flesh half dead, the senses numb
 Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth, --
 Such phantom blossoms palely shining
 Over the lifeless boughs of Time.
 O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!
 Had I been only a tree to shiver
 With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,
 Then I had fallen in the cyclone
 Which swept me out of the soul's suspense
 Where it's neither earth nor heaven.
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