Betrayal

I ONCE into a forest far

My maiden went to seek,
And fell upon her neck, when: "Ah!"

She threaten'd, "I will shriek!"

Then cried I haughtily: "I'll crush

The man that dares come near thee!"
"Hush!" whisper'd she: "My loved one, hush!

Or else they'll overhear thee!"

Once on a time, in sunshine weather,
Falsehood and Truth walk'd out together,
The neighbouring woods and lawns to view,
As opposites will sometimes do:
Through many a blooming mead they pass'd,
And at a brook arrived at last:
The purling stream, the margin green,
With flowers bedeck'd, a vernal scene,
Invited each itinerant maid
To rest a while beneath the shade;
Under a spreading beech they sat,
And pass'd the time with female chat;
While each her thoughts, the other feign'd.
At length, quoth Falsehood, Sister Truth,
For so she call'd her from her youth,
What if, to shun yon sultry beam,
We bathe in this delightful stream,
The bottom smooth, the water clear,
And there's no prying shepherd near?
With all my heart, the nymph replied,
And thr...

Sweet evening comes, friend of the criminal,
Like an accomplice with a light footfall;
The sky shuts on itself as though a tomb,
And man turns beast within his restless room.

o evening, night, so wished for by the one
Whose honest, weary arms can say: We've done
Our work today! The night will bring relief
To spirits who consume themselves with grief,
The scholar who is bowed with heavy head,
The broken worker falling into bed.
Meanwhile, corrupting demons of the air
Slowly wake up like men of great affairs,
And, flying, bump our shutters and our eaves.
Against the glimmerings teased by the breeze
Old Prostitution blazes in the streets;
She opens out her nest-of-ants retreat;
Everywhere she clears the secret routes,
A stealthy force preparing for a c...

When some beloved voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence, against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new
What hope? what help? what music will undo
That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count; not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chanted, nor the angels' sweet 'All hails,'
Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
Speak thou, availing Christ! and fill this pause.

One sung of thee who left the tale untold,
Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;
Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,
Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.

YOUTH.

Away, thou swarthy witch! Go forth

From out my house, I tell thee!
Or else I needs must, in my wrath,

Expel thee!
What's this thou singest so falsely, forsooth,
Of love and a maiden's silent truth?

Who'll trust to such a story!

GIPSY.

I sing of a maid's repentant fears,

And long and bitter yearning;
Her levity's changed to truth and tears

All-burning.
She dreads no more the threats of her mother,
She dreads far less the blows of her brother,

Than the dearly loved-one's hatred.

YOUTH.

Of selfishness sing and treacherous lies,

Of murder and thievish plunder!
Such actions false will cause no surprise,

Or wonder.
When they share their booty, both clothes a...

I know a cliff, whose steep and craggy brow
O'erlooks the troubled ocean, and spurns back
The advancing billow from its rugged base;
Yet many a goodly rood of land lies deep
Beneath the wild wave buried, which rolls on
Its course exulting o'er the prostrate towers
Of high cathedral--church--and abbey fair,--
Lifting its loud and everlasting voice
Over the ruins, which its depths enshroud,
As if it called on Time, to render back
The things that were, and give to life again
All that in dark oblivion sleeps below:--
Perched on the summit of that lofty cliff
A time-worn edifice o'erlooks the wave,
"Which greets the fisher's home-returning bark,"
And the young seaman checks his blithesome song
To hail the lonely ruin from the deep.

    Majestic in decay,...

He wor a poor hard workin lad,
An shoo a workin lass,
An hard they tew'd throo day to day,
For varry little brass.
An oft they tawk'd o'th' weddin day,
An lang'd for th' happy time,
When poverty noa moor should part,
Two lovers i' ther prime.

But wark wor scarce, an wages low,
An mait an drink wor dear,
They did ther best to struggle on,
As year crept after year.
But they wor little better off,
Nor what they'd been befoor;
It tuk 'em all ther time to keep
Grim Want aghtside o'th' door.

Soa things went on, wol Hope at last,
Gave place to dark despair;
They felt they'd nowt but lovin hearts,
An want an toil to share.
At length he screw'd his courage up
To leeav his native shore;
An goa where wealth wor worshipped less,

Threats come which no submission may assuage,
No sacrifice avert, no power dispute;
The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute,
And, 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage,
The warbling wren shall find a leafy cage;
The gadding bramble hang her purple fruit;
And the green lizard and the gilded newt
Lead unmolested lives, and die of age.
The owl of evening and the woodland fox
For their abode the shrines of Waltham choose:
Proud Glastonbury can no more refuse
To stoop her head before these desperate shocks
She whose high pomp displaced, as story tells,
Arimathean Joseph's wattled cells.

    We are the smirched.    Queen Honor is the spotless.
    We slept thro' wars where Honor could not sleep.
    We were faint-hearted.    Honor was full-valiant.
    We kept a silence Honor could not keep.

    Yet this late day we make a song to praise her.
    We, codeless, will yet vindicate her code.
    She who was mighty, walks with us, the beggars.
    The merchants drive her out upon the road.

    She makes a throne of sod beside our campfire.
    We give the maiden-queen our rags and tears.
    A battered, rascal guard have rallied round her,
    To keep her safe until the better years.

'Tis gone, with old belief and dream
That round it clung, and tempting scheme
Released from fear and doubt;
And the bright landscape too must lie,
By this blank wall, from every eye,
Relentlessly shut out.

Bear witness ye who seldom passed
That opening, but a look ye cast
Upon the lake below,
What spirit-stirring power it gained
From faith which here was entertained,
Though reason might say no.

Blest is that ground, where, o'er the springs
Of history, Glory claps her wings,
Fame sheds the exulting tear;
Yet earth is wide, and many a nook
Unheard of is, like this, a book
For modest meanings dear.

It was in sooth a happy thought
That grafted, on so fair a spot,
So confident a token
Of coming good; the charm is fled,

Oh what a Wreck! how changed in mien and speech!
Yet, though dread Powers, that work in mystery, spin
Entanglings of the brain; though shadows stretch
O'er the chilled heart reflect; far, far within
Hers is a holy Being, freed from Sin.
She is not what she seems, a forlorn wretch;
But delegated Spirits comfort fetch
To Her from heights that Reason may not win.
Like Children, She is privileged to hold
Divine communion; both do live and move,
Whate'er to shallow Faith their ways unfold,
Inly illumined by Heaven's pitying love;
Love pitying innocence not long to last,
In them, in Her our sins and sorrows past.

To fair Fidele’s grassy tomb
Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each op’ning sweet, of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing spring.


No wailing ghost shall dare appear,
To vex with shrieks this quiet grove:
But shepherd lads assemble here,
And melting virgins own their love.


No wither’d witch shall here be seen,
No goblins lead their nightly crew:
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew!


The redbreast oft at ev’ning hours
Shall kindly lend his little aid:
With hoary moss, and gather’d flow’rs,
To deck the ground where thou art laid.


When howling winds, and beating rain,
In tempests shake the sylvan cell,
Or midst the chase on ev’ry plain,
The tender th...

HOW weak is man! how changeable his mind!
His promises are naught, too oft we find;
I vowed (I hope in tolerable verse,)
Again no idle story to rehearse.
And whence this promise? - Not two days ago;
I'm quite confounded; better I should know:
A rhymer hear then, who himself can boast,
Quite steady for - a minute at the most.
The pow'rs above could PRUDENCE ne'er design;
For those who fondly court the SISTERS NINE.
Some means to please they've got, you will confess;
But none with certainty the charm possess.
If, howsoever, I were doomed to find
Such lines as fully would content the mind:
Though I should fail in matter, still in art;
I might contrive some pleasure to impart.

LET'S see what we are able to obtain: -
A bachelor resided in Touraine.
...

This is to-day, a golden summer's day
And yet--and yet
My vengeful soul will not forget
The past, forever now forgot, you say.

From that half height where I had sadly climbed,
I stretched my hand,
I lone in all that land,
Down there, where, helpless, you were limed.

Our fingers clasped, and dragging me a pace,
You struggled up.
It is a bitter Cup,
That now for naught, you turn away your face.

I shall remember this for aye and aye.
Whate'er may come,
Although my lips are dumb,
My spirit holds you to that yesterday.

I had not found the road too short,
As once I had in days of youth,
In that old forest of long ruth,
Where my young knighthood broke its heart,
Ere love and it had come to part,
And lies made mockery of truth.
I had not found the road too short.

A blind man, by the nightmare way,
Had set me right when I was wrong. -
I had been blind my whole life long -
What wonder then that on this day
The blind should show me how astray
My strength had gone, my heart once strong.
A blind man pointed me the way.

The road had been a heartbreak one,
Of roots and rocks and tortured trees,
And pools, above my horse's knees,
And wandering paths, where spiders spun
'Twixt boughs that never saw the sun,
And silence of lost centuries.
The road had been...

All my stars forsake me,
And the dawn-winds shake me.
Where shall I betake me?

Whither shall I run
Till the set of sun,
Till the day be done?

To the mountain-mine,
To the boughs o' the pine,
To the blind man's eyne,

To a brow that is
Bowed upon the knees,
Sick with memories.

1.
The serpent is shut out from Paradise.
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies:
The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs
Fled in the April hour.
I too must seldom seek again
Near happy friends a mitigated pain.

2.
Of hatred I am proud, - with scorn content;
Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown
Itself indifferent;
But, not to speak of love, pity alone
Can break a spirit already more than bent.
The miserable one
Turns the mind's poison into food, -
Its medicine is tears, - its evil good.

3.
Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,
Dear friends, dear FRIEND! know that I only fly
Your looks, because they stir
Griefs that should s...