Betrayal

    Ah, well can I the day recall, when first
    The conflict fierce of love I felt, and said:
    If this be love, how hard it is to bear!

    With eyes still fixed intent upon the ground,
    I saw but her, whose artless innocence,
    Triumphant took possession of this heart.

    Ah, Love, how badly hast thou governed me!
    Why should affection so sincere and pure,
    Bring with it such desire, such suffering?

    Why not serene, and full, and free from guile
    But sorrow-laden, and lamenting sore,
    Should joy so great into my heart descend?

    O tell me, tender heart, that sufferest so,
    Why with that thought such anguish should be blent,
    Compared with which, all other thoughts were naught?

    That t...

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.

They’ll cough in the ink to the world’s end;
Wear out the carpet with their shoes
Earning respect; have no strange friend;
If they have sinned nobody knows.
Lord, what would they say
Should their Catullus walk that way?

Across bleak widths of broken sea
A fierce north-easter breaks,
And makes a thunder on the lea
A whiteness of the lakes.
Here, while beyond the rainy stream
The wild winds sobbing blow,
I see the river of my dream
Four wasted years ago.

Narrara of the waterfalls,
The darling of the hills,
Whose home is under mountain walls
By many-luted rills!
Her bright green nooks and channels cool
I never more may see;
But, ah! the Past was beautiful
The sights that used to be.

There was a rock-pool in a glen
Beyond Narrara’s sands;
The mountains shut it in from men
In flowerful fairy lands;
But once we found its dwelling-place
The lovely and the lone
And, in a dream, I stooped to trace
Our names upon a stone.

Above ...

Come hither all sweet Maidens soberly
Down looking aye, and with a chasten'd light
Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,
And meekly let your fair hands joined be,
As if so gentle that ye could not see,
Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright,
Sinking away to his young spirit's night,
Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea.
'Tis young Leander toiling to his death.
Nigh swooning he doth purse his weary lips
For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile.
O horrid dream! see how his body dips
Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile;
He's gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!

        (To a Young Heir.)


        No sooner was thy father's death
        Proclaimed to some, with bated breath,
        Than every gambler was agog
        To win your rents and gorge your prog.

        One counted how much income clear
        You had in "ready" - by the year.

        Another cast his eyelid dark
        Over the mansion and the park.
        Some weighed the jewels and the plate,
        And all the unentailed estate:
        So much in land from mortgage free,
        So much in personality.

        Would you to highwaymen abroad
        Display your treasures on the road?
        Would you abet their raid of stealth
        By the display of hoarded wealth?
        And are you yet with blacklegs...

O to be a woman! to be left to pique and pine,
When the winds are out and calling to this vagrant heart of mine.
Whisht! it whistles at the windows, and how can I be still?
There! the last leaves of the beech-tree go dancing down the hill.
All the boats at anchor they are plunging to be free-
O to be a sailor, and away across the sea!
When the sky is black with thunder, and the sea is white with foam,
The gray-gulls whirl up shrieking and seek their rocky home,
Low his boat is lying leeward, how she runs upon the gale,
As she rises with the billows, nor shakes her dripping sail.
There is danger on the waters-there is joy where dangers be-
Alas! to be a woman and the nomad’s heart in me.

Ochone! to be a woman, only sighing on the shore-
With a soul that finds a passion ...

Here in the silent doorway let me linger
One moment, for the porch is still and lonely;
That shadow's but the rose vine in the moonlight;
All are asleep in peace, I waken only,
And he I wait, by my own heart's beating
I know how slow to him the tide creeps by,
Nor life, nor death, could bar our hearts from meeting;
Were worlds between, his soul to mine would fly.

Oh, shame! to think a heap of paltry metal
Should overbalance manhood's noblest graces;
A film of gold had gilt his worth and honor,
Warming to smiles the coldness of their faces;
Gentle to me, they rise in condemnation,
And plead with me than words more powerfully.
Oh! well I love them - but they have wealth and station
To fill their hearts, and he has only me.

But oh, my roses, how their...

The Truth Teller lifts the curtain,
    And shows us the people's plight;
And everything seems uncertain,
    And nothing at all looks right.
Yet out of the blackness groping,
    My heart finds a world in bloom;
For it somehow is fashioned for hoping,
    And it cannot live in the gloom.

He tells us from border to border,
    That race is warring with race;
With riot and mad disorder,
    The earth is a wretched place;
And yet ere the sun is setting
    I am thinking of peace, not strife;
For my heart has a way of forgetting
    All things save the joy of life.

I heard in my Youth's beginning
    That earth was a region of woe,
And trouble, and sorrow, and sinning:
    The Truth Teller told me so.
I knew it was true, and tragic...

The heavens look down with chilly frown,
The sun blinks oot wi' watery e'e,
The drift flies fast upon the blast,
The naked trees moan shiveringly.

The sun is gone, by mists withdrawn,
Muffling his head in snow-clouds grey,
The earth turns white, against the night,
The laden winds drive furiously.

The flowers are slain that graced the plain,
The earth is locked wi' bitter frost;
And my heart cries to stormy skies
After the dreary loved and lost.

The spring will come, the flowers will bloom,
The leaves in beauty clothe the tree,
But never more, oh, never more,
Will my lost darling come to me.

Beyond the skies her happy eyes
Look fearlessly in eyes Divine;
The bitter smart, the hungry heart,
Waiting with empty arms, is mine.

(A play in one act.)

The Knight.
The Lady.

Voices of men and women on the ground at the foot of the tower.
The voice of the Knight’s Page.



    The top of a high battlemented tower of a castle.    A stone ledge,
    which serves as a seat, extends part way around the parapet.
    Small clouds float by in the blue sky, and occasionally a swallow passes.
    Entrance R. from an unseen stairway which is supposed to extend around
    the outside of the tower.

The Lady (unseen).
Oh do not climb so fast, for I am faint
With looking down the tower to where the earth
Lies dreaming in the sun.I fear to fall.

The Knight (unseen).
Lean on me, love, my love, and look not down.

L.
Call me not “love”, call me your conquere...

    Four little chests all in a row,
    Dim with dust, and worn by time,
    All fashioned and filled, long ago,
    By children now in their prime.
    Four little keys hung side by side,
    With faded ribbons, brave and gay
    When fastened there, with childish pride,
    Long ago, on a rainy day.
    Four little names, one on each lid,
    Carved out by a boyish hand,
    And underneath there lieth hid
    Histories of the happy band
    Once playing here, and pausing oft
    To hear the sweet refrain,
    That came and went on the roof aloft,
    In the falling summer rain.


    "Meg" on the first lid, smooth and fair.
    I look in with loving eyes,
    For folded here, with well-known care,
    A goodly gathering lies,
 ...

I will remember what I was. I am sick of rope and chain,
I will remember my old strength and all my forest-affairs.
I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugarcane.
I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.

I will go out until the day, until the morning break,
Out to the winds 'untainted kiss, the waters' clean caress.
I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake.
I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless!

WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 1693


Strange to conceive, how the same objects strike
At distant hours the mind with forms so like!
Whether in time, Deduction's broken chain
Meets, and salutes her sister link again;
Or haunted Fancy, by a circling flight,
Comes back with joy to its own seat at night;
Or whether dead Imagination's ghost
Oft hovers where alive it haunted most;
Or if Thought's rolling globe, her circle run,
Turns up old objects to the soul her sun;
Or loves the Muse to walk with conscious pride
O'er the glad scene whence first she rose a bride:
    Be what it will; late near yon whispering stream,
Where her own Temple was her darling theme;
There first the visionary sound was heard,
When to poetic view the Muse appear'd.
Such seem'd her eye...

Your spoken words are roses fine and sweet,
The songs you sing are perfect pearls of sound.
How lavish nature is about your feet,
To scatter flowers and jewels both around.

Blushing the stream of petal beauty flows,
Softly the white strings trickle down and shine.
Oh! speak to me, my love, I crave a rose.
Sing me a song, for I would pearls were mine.

Who, e'en in words unfetter'd, might at full
Tell of the wounds and blood that now I saw,
Though he repeated oft the tale? No tongue
So vast a theme could equal, speech and thought
Both impotent alike. If in one band
Collected, stood the people all, who e'er
Pour'd on Apulia's happy soil their blood,
Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war
When of the rings the measur'd booty made
A pile so high, as Rome's historian writes
Who errs not, with the multitude, that felt
The grinding force of Guiscard's Norman steel,
And those the rest, whose bones are gather'd yet
At Ceperano, there where treachery
Branded th' Apulian name, or where beyond
Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms
The old Alardo conquer'd; and his limbs
One were to show transpierc'd, another ...

"The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering gray,
We'll talk its pensive hours away;

"Ierne, round our sheltered hall
November's gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to wave my daughter's hair,
And I am glad to watch the blaze
Glance from her eyes, with mimic rays;
To feel her cheek, so softly pressed,
In happy quiet on my breast,

"But, yet, even this tranquillity
Brings bitter, restless thoughts to me;
And, in the red fire's cheerful glow,
I think of deep glens, blocked with snow;
I dream of moor, and misty hill,
Where evening closes dark and chill;
For, lone, among the mountains cold,
Lie those that I h...

I.

September On Cape Ann

The partridge-berry flecks with flame the way
That leads to ferny hollows where the bee
Drones on the aster. Far away the sea
Points its deep sapphire with a gleam of grey.
Here from this height where, clustered sweet, the bay
Clumps a green couch, the haw and barberry
Beading her hair, sad Summer, seemingly,
Has fallen asleep, unmindful of the day.
The chipmunk barks upon the old stone wall;
And in the shadows, like a shadow, stirs
The woodchuck where the boneset's blossom creams.
Was that a phoebe with its pensive call?
A sighing wind that shook the drowsy firs?
Or only Summer waking from her dreams?

II.

In An Annisquam Garden

Old phantoms haunt it of the long ago;
Old ghosts of old-time l...

One golden summer day,
Along the forest-way,
Young Colin passed with blithesome steps alert.

His locks with careless grace
Rimmed round his handsome face
And drifted outward on the airy surge.

So blithe of heart was he,
He hummed a melody,
And all the birds were hushed to hear him sing.

Across his shoulders flung
His bow and baldric hung:
So, in true huntsman's guise, he threads the wood.

The sun mounts up the sky,
The air moves sluggishly,
And reeks with summer heat in every pore.

His limbs begin to tire,
Slumbers his youthful fire;
He sinks upon a violet-bed to rest.

The soft winds go and come
With low and drowsy hum,
And ope for him the ivory gate of dreams.

Beneath the forest-shade
The...