Betrayal

There is silence that saith, "Ah me!"
There is silence that nothing saith;
One the silence of life forlorn,
One the silence of death;
One is, and the other shall be.

One we know and have known for long,
One we know not, but we shall know,
All we who have ever been born;
Even so, be it so, -
There is silence, despite a song.

Sowing day is a silent day,
Resting night is a silent night;
But whoso reaps the ripened corn
Shall shout in his delight,
While silences vanish away.

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze,
And cups o'erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

Ah, help me! but her face and brow
Are lovelier than lilies are
Beneath the light of moon and star
That smile as they are smiling now -
White lilies in a pallid swoon
Of sweetest white beneath the moon -
White lilies, in a flood of bright
Pure lucidness of liquid light
Cascading down some plenilune,
When all the azure overhead
Blooms like a dazzling daisy-bed. -
So luminous her face and brow,
The luster of their glory, shed
In memory, even, blinds me now.

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play
In accidental power.
The blond assassin passes on,
The sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another day
For an approving God.

Its long sin th' parson made us one,
An yet it seems to me,
As we've gooan thrustin, toilin on,
Time's made noa change i' thee.
Tha grummeld o' thi weddin day, -
Tha's nivver stopt it yet;
An aw expect tha'll growl away
Th' last bit o' breeath tha'll get.

Growl on, old lass, an ease thi mind!
It nivver troubles me;
Aw've proved 'at tha'rt booath true an kind, -
Ther's lots 'at's war nor thee.
An if tha's but a hooamly face,
Framed in a white starched cap,
Ther's nooan wod suit as weel i'th' place, -
Ther's nooan aw'd like to swap.

Soa aw'll contented jog along, -
It's th' wisest thing to do;
Aw've seldom need to use im tongue,
Tha tawks enuff for two.
Tha cooks mi vittals, maks mi bed,
An finds me clooas to don;
An if ...

Redbirds, redbirds,
Long and long ago,
What a honey-call you had
In hills I used to know;

Redbud, buckberry,
Wild plum-tree
And proud river sweeping
Southward to the sea,

Brown and gold in the sun
Sparkling far below,
Trailing stately round her bluffs
Where the poplars grow.

Redbirds, redbirds,
Are you singing still
As you sang one May day
On Saxton's Hill?

Yea, constant through the changeful year,
This queenly Height commands our praise.
To stand in meek unflinching hardihood
When fortune blows its storm of fright,
And work to full effect that good
Resolved in open days of clearer sight-
O, this is worth!
That daily sees the soul
To braver liberties give birth,
That heeds not time's annoy,
And hears surrounding voices roll
Perennial circumstance of joy.
Then come not only when the springtime blows
The old familiar strangeness of its breath
Across the long-lain snows,
And chants her resurrected songs
About the tombs of death;
Nor yet when summer glows
In roseate throngs
And works her plenitude of deeds
By tangled dells and waving meads,
Come here in beauty's pilgrimage:
Nor when the ...

Talk not to me of souls that do conceive
    Sublime ideals, but, deterred by Fate
    And bound by circumstances, sit desolate,
And long for heights they never can achieve.

It is not so.    That which we most desire,
    With understanding, we at last obtain,
    In part or whole.    I hold there is no rain,
No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire.

Show me thy labour, I straightway will name
    The nature of thy thoughts.    Who bends the bow,
    And lets the arrow from the strained string go,
Strikes somewhere near the object of his aim.

We build our ships from timbers of the brain;
    With products of the soul we load the hold;
    Where lies the blame if they bring back no gold,
Or if they spring a leak upon the main?

T...

("Lorsque l'enfant parait.")

[XIX., May 11, 1830.]


The child comes toddling in, and young and old
With smiling eyes its smiling eyes behold,
And artless, babyish joy;
A playful welcome greets it through the room,
The saddest brow unfolds its wrinkled gloom,
To greet the happy boy.

If June with flowers has spangled all the ground,
Or winter bleak the flickering hearth around
Draws close the circling seat;
The child still sheds a never-failing light;
We call; Mamma with mingled joy and fright
Watches its tottering feet.

Perhaps at eve as round the fire we draw,
We speak of heaven, or poetry, or law,
Or politics, or prayer;
The child comes in, 'tis now all smiles and play,
Farewell to grave discourse and poet's lay,<...

And we shall not get excited. Because a translator
May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on
Words from man to son, from one tongue
To others' lips, un-
Knowingly, like a father who passes on
The features of his dead father's face
To his son, and he himself is like neither of them. Merely a mediator.


We shall remember the things we held in our hands
That slipped out.
What I have in my possession and what I do not have in my possession.

We must not get excited.
Calls and their callers drowned. Or, my beloved
Gave me a few words before she left,
To bring up for her.

And no more shall we tell what we were told
To other tellers. Silence as admission. We must not
Get excited.

We were storemen, clerks and packers on an ammunition dump
Twice the size of Cootamundra, and the goods we had to hump
They were bombs as big as water-butts, and cartridges in tons,
Shells that looked like blessed gasmains, and a line in traction-guns.

We had struck a warehouse dignity in dealing with the stocks.
It was, “Sign here, Mr. Eddie!” “Clarkson, forward to the socks!”
Our floor-walker was a major, with a nozzle like a peach,
And a stutter in his Trilbies; and a limping kind of speech.

We were off at eight to business, we were free for lunch at one,
And we talked of new Spring fashions, and the brisk trade being done.
After five we sought our dugouts lying snug beneath the hill,
Each with hollyhocks before it and geraniums on the sill.

Singing “Home, Sw...

Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?
"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother."
Your friends, then?
"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me."
Your country?
"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated."
Then Beauty?
"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal."
Gold?
"I hate it as you hate your God."
What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love?
"I love the clouds the clouds that pass yonder the marvelous clouds."

Heroes and kings! your distance keep:
In peace let one poor poet sleep,
Who never flatter'd folks like you:
Let Horace blush, and Virgil too.

ROVER, awake! the grey Cock crows!
Come, shake your coat and go with me!
High in the East the green Hill glows;
And glory crowns our shelt'ring Tree.
The Sheep expect us at the fold:
My faithful Dog, let's haste away,
And in his earliest beams behold,
And hail, the source of cheerful day.

Half his broad orb o'erlooks the Hill,
And darting down the Valley flies:
At every casement welcome still;
The golden summons of the skies.
Go, fetch my Staff; and o'er the dews
Let Echo waft thy gladsome voice.
Shall we a cheerful note refuse
When rising Morn proclaims 'Rejoice!'

Now then we'll start; and thus I'll sling
Our store, a trivial load to bear:
Yet, ere night comes, should hunger sting,
I'll not encroach on Rover's share.
The...

The panting City cried to the Sea,
"I am faint with heat,--O breathe on me!"

And the Sea said, "Lo, I breathe! but my breath
To some will be life, to others death!"

As to Prometheus, bringing ease
In pain, come the Oceanides,

So to the City, hot with the flame
Of the pitiless sun, the east wind came.

It came from the heaving breast of the deep,
Silent as dreams are, and sudden as sleep.

Life-giving, death-giving, which will it be;
O breath of the merciful, merciless Sea?

One moment I place your two bright pearls against my robe,
And the red silk mirrors a rose in each.

Why did I not meet you before I married?

See, there are two tears quivering at my lids;
I am giving back your pearls.

From the Chinese of Chang Chi (770-850).

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

        Burns sang so sweet behind the plow,
        Daisies we'll wreath around his brow,
        Musing on thee what visions throng,
        Of floods you poured of Scottish song.
        Scott he did write romancing rhymes
        Of chivalry of ancient times;
        For tender feeling none can cope
        With Campbell the sweet Bard of hope.
        Eye with sympathetic tear in
        Will shed it for Exile of Erin,
        And Tannahill while at his loom
        Wove flowers of song will ever bloom.
        Hogg, Ettrick Shepherd, did gain fame
        By singing when the kye comes hame,
        With good time coming Bard McKay
        Still merrily doth cheer the way.