Betrayal

Elemental drifts!
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me!

As I ebb'd with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Alone, held by this eternal Self of me, out of the pride of which I utter my poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender winrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum...

It is night-time when the saddest and the darkest memories haunt,
When outside the printing office the most glaring posters flaunt,
When the love-wrong is accomplished. And I think of things and mark
That the blackest lies are written, told, and printed after dark.
’Tis the time of “late editions”. It is night when, as of old,
Foulest things are done for hatred, for ambition, love and gold.

Racing from the senseless city down the dull suburban streets,
Come again the ragged newsboys yelping with their paltry sheets,
Lying posters meaning nothing, double columns meaning less,
Twisted facts and reckless falsehoods, dodges of the Daily Press.
In the town the roar and rattle of the great machines once more,
Greedy for the extra penny, while the “Public” howls for war.

War...

The grand, authentic songs that roll
Across grey widths of wild-faced sea,
The lordly anthems of the Pole,
Are loud upon the lea.

Yea, deep and full the South Wind sings
The mighty symphonies that make
A thunder at the mountain springs
A whiteness on the lake.

And where the hermit hornet hums,
When Summer fires his wings with gold,
The hollow voice of August comes,
Across the rain and cold.

Now on the misty mountain tops,
Where gleams the crag and glares the fell,
Wild Winter, like one hunted, stops
And shouts a fierce farewell.

Keen fitful gusts shoot past the shore
And hiss by moor and moody mere
The heralds bleak that come before
The turning of the year.

A sobbing spirit wanders where
By fits and starts...

    Do you remember that June day among
    The hills, the high, far-reaching Sussex hills?
    Above, the straggling flocks of fleecy clouds
    That skipped and chased each other merrily
    In God's warm pasturage, the azure sky;
    Below, the hills that stretched their mighty heads
    As though they fain would neighbor with that sky.
    Deep, vivid green, save where the flocks showed white;
    The wise ewes hiding from the glow of noon
    In shady spots, the short-wooled lambs at play,
    And over all the stillness of the hills,
    The sweet and solemn stillness of the hills.

    The shepherds gave us just such looks of mild
    Surprise as did the sheep they shepherded.
    "Ye are not of the hills," so said the looks,
    "Not of our kind, but st...

I will forget those days of mingled bliss
And dear delicious pain, - will cast from me
All dreams of what I know can never be,
Even the remembrance of that parting kiss.
I knew that some day it would come to this
In spite of all our sworn fidelity,
That I must banish even memory,
And, sorrowing, learn to say, nor say amiss
    I will forget.

I register this vow, and am content
That it be so. Ah me! - yet, if the door
Shut on our heaven might be asunder rent
Even now, and I could see the way we went,
I might retract my vow, and say no more
    I will forget.

1.

River, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the Lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me:

2.

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

3.

What do I say - a mirror of my heart?
Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?
Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;
And such as thou art were my passions long.

4.

Time may have somewhat tamed them, - not for ever;
Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye
Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!
Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away:

All things have power to hold us back.
Our very hopes build up a wall
Of doubt, whose shadow stretches black
        O'er all.

The dreams, that helped us once, become
Dread disappointments, that oppose
Dead eyes to ours, and lips made dumb
        With woes.

The thoughts that opened doors before
Within the mind's house, hide away;
Discouragement hath locked each door
        For aye.

Come, loss, more frequently than gain!
And failure than success! until
The spirit's struggle to attain
        Is still!

Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world a world how lovely then!
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
How different, oh, how different, in the day
When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,
O Venus Amathusia!

Then, through a veil of dreams
Woven by song, truth's youthful beauty glowed,
And life's redundant and rejoicing streams
Gave to the soulless, soul where'r they flowed
Man gifted nature with divinity
To lift and link her to the breast of love;
All things betrayed to the initiate eye
The track of gods above!

Where lifeless fixed afar,
A flaming ball to our dull sense is given,
Phoebus Apollo, in his golden car,
In silent glo...

To R.K. Leather
(July 16th, 1892.)

PAOLO AND FRANCESCA

It happened in that great Italian land
Where every bosom heateth with a star -
At Rimini, anigh that crumbling strand
The Adriatic filcheth near and far -
In that same past where Dante's dream-days are,
That one Francesca gave her youthful gold
Unto an aged carle to bolt and bar;
Though all the love which great young hearts can hold,
How could she give that love unto a miser old?

Nay! but young Paolo was the happy lad,
A youth of dreaming eye yet dauntless foot,
Who all Francesca's wealth of loving had;
One brave to scale a wall and steal the fruit,
Nor fear because some dotard owned the root;
Yea! one who wore his love like sword on thigh
And kept not all his valour for his lut...

The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:

The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caressed,
Have left her solitude!

I ween, that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could ne'er recall
The light of joy again.

They thought the tide of grief would flow
Unchecked through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for honour's breath,
Or pleasure's shade pursue,
The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.

And, if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow's so...

May has come from out the showers,
Sun and splendor in her train.
All the grasses and the flowers
Waken up to life again.
Once again the leaves do show,
And the meadow blossoms blow,
Once again through hills and dales
Rise the songs of nightingales.

Wheresoe'er on field or hillside
With her paint-brush Spring is seen,--
In the valley, by the rillside,
All the earth is decked with green.
Once again the sun beguiles
Moves the drowsy world to smiles.
See! the sun, with mother-kiss
Wakes her child to joy and bliss.

Now each human feeling presses
Flow'r like, upward to the sun,
Softly, through the heart's recesses,
Steal sweet fancies, one by one.
Golden dreams, their wings outshaking,
Now are making
Realms celestial,
...

Lost manor where I walk continually
A ghost, while yet in woman's flesh and blood;
Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers
And gliding steadfast down your corridors
I come by nightly custom to this room,
And even on sultry afternoons I come
Drawn by a thread of time-sunk memory.

Empty, unless for a huge bed of state
Shrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry
(A puppet theatre where malignant fancy
Peoples the wings with fear). At my right hand
A ravelled bell-pull hangs in readiness
To summon me from attic glooms above
Service of elder ghosts; here at my left
A sullen pier-glass cracked from side to side
Scorns to present the face as do new mirrors
With a lying flush, but shows it melancholy
And pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors.<...

1. Daylong I brooded upon the Passion of Israel.

2. I saw him bound to the wheel, nailed to the cross, cut off by the sword, burned at the stake, tossed into the seas.

3. And always the patient, resolute, martyr face arose in silent rebuke and defiance.

4. A Prophet with four eyes; wide gazed the orbs of the spirit above the sleeping eyelids of the senses.

5. A Poet, who plucked from his bosom the quivering heart and fashioned it into a lyre.

6. A placid-browed Sage, uplifted from earth in celestial meditation.

7. These I saw, with princes and people in their train; the monumental dead and the standard-bearers of the future.

8. And suddenly I heard a burst of mocking laughter, and turning, I beheld the shuffling gait, the ignominious features, the sordid mask of ...

Forth from the dust and din,
The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,
The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,
The wrangle and jangle of unrests,
Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win -
As from swart August to the green lap of May -
To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts
Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware
In any of her innumerable nests
Of that first sudden plash of dawn,
Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,
Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day
In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn
Forward and up, in wider and wider way,
Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,
On this our lith of the World, as round it roars
And spins into the outlook of the Sun
(The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge),
...

‘Number four, the girl who died on the table,
The girl with golden hair,’
The purpling body lies on the polished marble.
We open the throat, and lay the thyroid bare . . .

One, who held the ether-cone, remembers
Her dark blue frightened eyes.
He heard the sharp breath quiver, and saw her breast
More hurriedly fall and rise.
Her hands made futile gestures, she turned her head
Fighting for breath; her cheeks were flushed to scarlet,
And, suddenly, she lay dead.

And all the dreams that hurried along her veins
Came to the darkness of a sudden wall.
Confusion ran among them, they whirled and clamored,
They fell, they rose, they struck, they shouted,
Till at last a pallor of silence hushed them all.

What was her name? Where had she walked that morn...

Farewell, Amynta, we must part;
The charm has lost its power
Which held so fast my captived heart
Until this fatal hour.

Hadst thou not thus my love abused,
And used me ne'er so ill,
Thy cruelty I had excused,
And I had loved thee still.

But know, my soul disdain'd thy sway,
And scorns thy charms and thee,
To which each fluttering coxcomb may
As welcome be as me.

Think in what perfect bliss you reign'd,
How loved before thy fall,
And now, alas! how much disdain'd
By me, and scorn'd by all.

Yet thinking of each happy hour,
Which I with thee have spent,
So robs my rage of all its power,
That I almost relent.

But pride will never let me bow;
No more thy charms can move;
Yet thou art worth my pity now,

I made a truce last night with Sorrow,
    The queen of tears, the foe of sleep,
To keep her tents until the morrow,
    Nor send such dreams to make me weep.

Before the lusty day was springing,
    Before the tired moon was set,
I dreamed I heard my dead love singing,
    And when I woke my eyes were wet.

O youths and virgins: o declining eld:
O pale misfortune's slaves: o ye who dwell
Unknown with humble quiet; ye who wait
In courts, or fill the golden seat of kings:
O sons of sport and pleasure: o thou wretch
That weep'st for jealous love, or the sore wounds
Of conscious guilt, or death's rapacious hand
Which left thee void of hope: o ye who roam
In exile; ye who through the embattled field
Seek bright renown; or who for nobler palms
Contend, the leaders of a public cause;
Approach: behold this marble. Know ye not
The features? Hath not oft his faithful tongue
Told you the fashion of your own estate,
The secrets of your bosom? Here then, round
His monument with reverence while ye stand,
Say to each other: "This was Shakespeare's form;
"Who walk'd in ever...