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For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main. And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright. From ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth’ by Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861).
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Ian Glover (1992) studied this question.
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