Betrayal

SYNOPSIS

Introduction - The mountains and the sea the cradles of Freedom contrasted with the birth-place of Cromwell His childhood and youth The germs of his future character probably formed during his life of inaction Cromwell at the moment of his intended embarkation Retrospect of his past life and profligate youth    Temptations held out by the prospect of a life of rest in America How far such rest was allowable Vision of his future life Different persons represented in it Charles the First Cromwell himself His victories and maritime glory Pym Strafford Laud Hampden Falkland Milton    Charles the First Cromwell on his death-bed His character Dispersion of the vision Conclusion.

Schrecklich ist es, deiner Wahrheit
Sterbliches Gefäss zu seyn.
- V Schiller,

High fate is theirs, ye sleeple...

(To P. A. G.)


Here they trysted, here they strayed,
In the leafage dewy and boon,
Many a man and many a maid,
And the morn was merry June:
'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,'
Sang the blackbird in the may;
And the hour with flying feet
While they dreamed was yesterday.

Many a maid and many a man
Found the leafage close and boon;
Many a destiny began,
O the morn was merry June.
Dead and gone, dead and gone,
(Hark the blackbird in the may!),
Life and Death went hurrying on,
Cheek on cheek, and where were they?

Dust in dust engendering dust
In the leafage fresh and boon,
Man and maid fulfil their trust,
Still the morn turns merry June.
Mother Life, Father Death
(O the blackbird in the may!),
Each the other's...

I’ve sung of Honor’s golden hair
And Hero’s auburn tresses,
Of Bella’s back abundance, where
The sun throws his caresses;
I’ve sung of curl, and coil, and braid;
On meshes I’ve dilated,
Until at last I’m sore afraid
There’s nothing re the hair of maid
That I have left unstated.

‘Twill much relieve the constant strain
Of rhyming to extol her
When on the roof of Sophie’s brain
Appears a bright cupola.
The poet’s verse will freshly run,
Effects will come much faster,
If he may tell the darling one
Her skull is glowing like the sun
And smooth as alabaster.

New stimulus the singer nerves,
When beauty, scorning switches,
Adds to her many swelling curves
A baldness that bewitches.
We’ve sung too many wigs, I swear,
And n...

Seest thou not, in clearest days,
Oft thick fogs cloud Heaven's rays?
And that vapours which do breathe
From the Earth's gross womb beneath,
Seem unto us with black steams
To pollute the Sun's bright beams,
And yet vanish into air,
Leaving it unblemished fair?
So, my Willy, shall it be
With Detraction's breath on thee:
It shall never rise so high
As to stain thy poesy.
As that sun doth oft exhale
Vapours from each rotten vale,
Poesy so sometime drains
Gross conceits from muddy brains;
Mists of envy, fogs of spite,
Twixt men's judgments and her light;
But so much her power may do,
That she can dissolve them too.
If thy verse do bravely tower,
As she makes wing she gets power;
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still...

All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.

Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.

Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.

Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.

Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.

In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.

Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,

S...

    She sits within the Magic Lantern
    - that facsimile for pleasure,
    decor of wineskins where
    at $2.50 a garment
    extravagance comes extra;
    skin like rosy flames
    the whisk of smoke
    at hearthside
    sunlight about her face.

    Cherubs arise from those lips
    and battle lines are drawn
    about the sweet curvature of her breasts.
    A tight cashmere sweater rides
    comfortably two of the finest King's
    deer headstrong thru Sherwood Forest.

    And, Merry Man,
    firmly planted in Lincoln Green,
    the plodding turf growing at odds within my soul -
    give this brief to the Sheriff at Buckingham;
    I cool my heels, the soft doe lies prostrate at my feet.

    She's loveliness,
  ...

A Poem In Twelve Books


Stop playing, poet! may a brother speak?
’Tis you speak, that’s your error. Song’s our art:
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts
Instead of draping them in sighs and sounds.
True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!
But why such long prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
And taking it upon your breast at length,
Only to speak dry words across its strings?
Stark-naked thought is in request enough,
Speak prose and holloa it till Europe hears!
The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,
Which helps the hunter’s voice from Alp to Alp,
Exchange our harp for that, who hinders you?

But here’s your fault; grown men want thought, you think;
Thought’s what they me...

    The    time shall be, old Wisdom says, when you
        Shall grow awrinkled and I, indifferent,
    Shall no more follow the light steps I knew
        Or trace you, finding out the way you went,
    By swinging branches and the displaced flowers
        Among the thickets.    I no more shall stand,
    With careful pencil through the adoring hours
        Scratching your grace on paper.    My still hand
    No more shall tremble at the touch of yours
        And I'll write no more songs and you'll not sing.
    But this is all a lie, for love endures
        And we shall closer kiss, remembering
    How budding trees turned barren in the sun
    Through this long week, whereof one day's now done.

Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!

Sky, what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!

World, how it walled about
Life with disgrace,
Till God's own smile came out:
That was thy face!

Picture a beauty, shoulders rich and fine,
Letting her long hair trail into her wine.
Talons of love, the poison tooth of sin
Slip and are dulled against her granite skin.
She laughs at Death and flouts Debauchery;
Those fiends who in their heavy pleasantries
Gouge and destroy, still keep a strange regard
For majesty - her body strong and hard.
A goddess, or a sultan's regal wife
A faithful Paynim of voluptuous life
Her eyes call mortal beings to the charms
Of ready breasts, between her open arms.
She feels, she knows - this maid, this barren girl
By our desire fit to move the world
The gift of body's beauty is sublime
And draws forgiveness out of every crime.
She knows no Hell, or any afterlife,
And when her time shall come to face the Night
She'll ...

Above the city hung the moon,
Right o'er a plot of ground
Where flowers and orchard-trees were fenced
With lofty walls around:
'Twas Gilbert's garden, there to-night
Awhile he walked alone;
And, tired with sedentary toil,
Mused where the moonlight shone.

This garden, in a city-heart,
Lay still as houseless wild,
Though many-windowed mansion fronts
Were round it; closely piled;
But thick their walls, and those within
Lived lives by noise unstirred;
Like wafting of an angel's wing,
Time's flight by them was heard.

Some soft piano-notes alone
Were sweet as faintly given,
Where ladies, doubtless, cheered the hearth
With song that winter-even.
The city's many-mingled sounds
Rose like the hum of ocean;
They rather lulled the...

Why have you stolen my delight
In all the golden shows of Spring
When every cherry-tree is white
And in the limes the thrushes sing,

O fickler than the April day,
O brighter than the golden broom,
O blither than the thrushes' lay,
O whiter than the cherry-bloom,

O sweeter than all things that blow ...
Why have you only left for me
The broom, the cherry's crown of snow,
And thrushes in the linden-tree?

The sun goes down, and with him takes
The coarseness of my poor attire;
The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame
Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Pale Northern girls! you scorn our race;
You captives of your air-tight halls,
Wear out indoors your sickly days,
But leave us the horizon walls.

And if I take you, dames, to task,
And say it frankly without guile,
Then you are Gypsies in a mask,
And I the lady all the while.

If on the heath, below the moon,
I court and play with paler blood,
Me false to mine dare whisper none,--
One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,
For teeth and hair with shopmen deal;
My swarthy tint is in the grain,
The rocks and forest know it real.

The wild ai...

I.

    Wherever I am, and whatever I do,
    My Phyllis is still in my mind;
    When angry, I mean not to Phyllis to go,
    My feet, of themselves, the way find:
    Unknown to myself I am just at her door,
    And when I would rail, I can bring out no more,
    Than, Phyllis too fair and unkind!

    When Phyllis I see, my heart bounds in my breast,
    And the love I would stifle is shown;
    But asleep or awake I am never at rest,
    When from my eyes Phyllis is gone.
    Sometimes a sad dream does delude my sad mind;
    But, alas! when I wake, and no Phyllis I find,
    How I sigh to myself all alone!

    Should a king be my rival in her I adore,
    He should offer his treasure in vain:
    Oh, let me alone to be happy and poor,...

O I admire and sorrow! The heart's eye grieves
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,
And beauty's dearest veriest vein is tears.



Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest
In one fair fall; but, for time's aftercast,
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.

And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams
Their young delightful hour do feature down
That fleeted else like day-dissolvèd dreams
Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.

She leans on him with such contentment fond
As well the sister sits, would well the wife;
His looks, the soul's own letters, see beyond,
Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.

But...

The sky, grown dull through many waiting days,
Flashed into crimson with the sunrise charm,
So all my love, aroused to vague alarm,
Flushed into fire and burned with eager blaze.
I saw thee not as suppliant, with still gaze
Of pleading, but as victor, - and thine arm
Gathered me fast into embraces warm,
And I was taught the light of Love's dear ways.

This day of triumph is no longer thine,
Oh conqueror, in calm exclusive power. -
As evermore, through storm, and shade, and shine,
    Your woe my pain, your joy my ecstasy,
We breathe together, - so this blessed hour
    Of self-surrender makes my jubilee!

She sat in the cottage door, and the fair June moon looked down
On a face as pure as its own, an innocent face and sweet
As the roses dewy white that grow so thick at her feet,
White royal roses, fit for a monarch's crown.

And one is clasped in her slender hand, and one on her bosom lies,
And two rare blushing buds loop up her light brown hair,
Ah, roses of June, you never looked on a face so white and fair,
Such perfectly moulded lips, such sweet and heavenly eyes.

This low-walled home is dear to her, she has come to it to-day
From the lordly groves of her palace home afar,
But not to stay; there's a light on her brow like the light of a star,
And her eyes are looking beyond the earth, far, far away.

She was born in this cottage home, the sweetest rosebud of sp...

Helen, in her silent room,
Weaves upon the upright loom;
Weaves a mantle rich and dark,
Purpled over, deep. But mark
How she scatters o'er the wool
Woven shapes, till it is full
Of men that struggle close, complex;
Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks
Arching high; spear, shield, and all
The panoply that doth recall
Mighty war; such war as e'en
For Helen's sake is waged, I ween.
Purple is the groundwork: good!
All the field is stained with blood -
Blood poured out for Helen's sake;
(Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake!)
But the shapes of men that pass
Are as ghosts within a glass,
Woven with whiteness of the swan,
Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan
From the garment's purple fold
Where Troy's tale is twined and told.
Well may Hele...