Betrayal

Lay him down where the fern is thick and fair.
Fain was he for life, here lies he low:
With the blood washed clean from his brow and his beautiful hair,
Lay him here in the dell where the orchids grow.

Let the birch-bark torches roar in the gloom,
And the trees crowd up in a quiet startled ring
So lone is the land that in this lonely room
Never before has breathed a human thing.

Cover him well in his canvas shroud, and the moss
Part and heap again on his quiet breast,
What recks he now of gain, or love, or loss
Who for love gained rest?

While she who caused it all hides her insolent eyes
Or braids her hair with the ribbons of lust and of lies,
And he who did the deed fares out like a hunted beast
To lurk where the musk-ox tramples the barren groun...

The evening came; the golden vane
A moment in the sunset glanced,
Then darkened, and then gleamed again,
As from the east the moon advanced
And touched it with a softer light;
While underneath, with flowing mane,
Upon the sign the Red Horse pranced,
And galloped forth into the night.

But brighter than the afternoon
That followed the dark day of rain,
And brighter than the golden vane
That glistened in the rising moon,
Within the ruddy fire-light gleamed;
And every separate window-pane,
Backed by the outer darkness, showed
A mirror, where the flamelets gleamed
And flickered to and fro, and seemed
A bonfire lighted in the road.

Amid the hospitable glow,
Like an old actor on the stage,
With the uncertain voice of age,
The sing...

Fill for me a brimming bowl
And in it let me drown my soul:
But put therein some drug, designed
To Banish Women from my mind:
For I want not the stream inspiring
That fills the mind with—fond desiring,
But I want as deep a draught
As e'er from Lethe's wave was quaff'd;
From my despairing heart to charm
The Image of the fairest form
That e'er my reveling eyes beheld,
That e'er my wandering fancy spell'd.
In vain! away I cannot chace
The melting softness of that face,
The beaminess of those bright eyes,
That breast—earth's only Paradise.
My sight will never more be blest;
For all I see has lost its zest:
Nor with delight can I explore,
The Classic page, or Muse's lore.
Had she but known how beat my heart,
And with one smile reliev'd its ...

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.


O powerful, western, fallen star!
O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d! O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul!


In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, de...

'Tis time, I feel, to leave thee now,
    While yet my soul is something free;
While yet those dangerous eyes allow
    One minute's thought to stray from thee.

Oh! thou becom'st each moment dearer;
    Every chance that brings me nigh thee
Brings my ruin nearer, nearer,--
    I am lost, unless I fly thee.

Nay, if thou dost not scorn and hate me,
    Doom me not thus so soon to fall
Duties, fame, and hopes await me,--
    But that eye would blast them all!

For, thou hast heart as false and cold
    As ever yet allured and swayed,
And couldst, without a sigh, behold
    The ruin which thyself had made.

Yet,--could I think that, truly fond,
    That eye but once would smile on me,
Even as thou art, how far beyond
   ...

How can we kill the long, the old Remorse
That lives, writhes, twists itself
And mines us as the worm devours the dead,
The cankerworm the oak?
How can we choke the old, the long Remorse?

And what brew, or what philtre, or what wine
Could drown this enemy,
As deadly as the avid courtesan,
And patient as the ant?
In what brew? in what philtre? in what wine?

Oh, say it if you know, sweet sorceress!
To this my anguished soul,
Like one who's dying, crushed by wounded men,
Stamped, trampled by a horse's hoof.
Oh, say it if you know, sweet sorceress,

To this man whom the wolf already sniffs
And whom the crow surveys,
This broken soldier! Must he then despair
Of having cross and tomb,
This dying man the wolf already sniffs!

I


"No, no! Leave me not in this dark hour,"
She cried. And I,
"Thou foolish dear, but call not dark this hour;
What night doth lour?"
And nought did she reply,
But in her eye
The clamorous trouble spoke, and then was still.

O that I heard her once more speak,
Or even with troubled eye
Teach me her fear, that I might seek
Poppies for misery.
The hour was dark, although I knew it not,
But when the livid dawn broke then I knew,
How while I slept the dense night through
Treachery's worm her fainting fealty slew.

O that I heard her once more speak
As then--so weak--
"No, no! Leave me not in this dark hour."
That I might answer her,
"Love, be at rest, for nothing now shall stir
Thy heart, but my heart beating there."<...

Amidst applauding cheers I won a prize.
A cynic watched me, with ironic eyes;
An open foe, in open hatred, sneered;
I cared for neither.    Then my friend appeared.
Eager, I listened for his glad 'Well done.'
But sudden shadow seemed to shroud my sun.
He praised me:    yet each slow, unwilling word
Forced from its sheath base Envy's hidden sword,
Two-edged, it wounded me; but, worst of all,
It thrust my friend down from his pedestal,
And showed him as he was - so small, so small.

He waited till within her tower
Her taper signalled him the hour.
He was a prince both fair and brave.
What hope that he would love her slave!
He of the Persian dynasty;
And she a Queen of Araby!
No Peri singing to a star
Upon the sea were lovelier....
I helped her drop the silken rope.
He clomb, aflame with love and hope.
I drew the dagger from my gown
And cut the ladder, leaning down.
Oh, wild his face, and wild the fall:
Her cry was wilder than them all.
I heard her cry; I heard him moan;
And stood as merciless as stone.
The eunuchs came: fierce scimitars
Stirred in the torch-lit corridors.
She spoke like one who speaks in sleep,
And bade me strike or she would leap.
I bade her leap: the time was short:
And kept the dagger for my he...

Tufted and bunched and ranged with careless art
Here, where the paving-stones are set apart,
Alert and gay and innocent of guile,
The little pansies nod their heads and smile.

With what a whispering and a lulling sound
They watch the children sport about the ground,
Longing, it seems, to join the pretty play
That laughs and runs the light-winged hours away.

And other children long ago there were
Who shone and played and made the garden fair,
To whom the pansies in their robes of white
And gold and purple gave a welcome bright.

Gone are those voices, but the others came.
Joyous and free, whose spirit was the same;
And other pansies, robed as those of old,
Peeped up and smiled in purple, white and gold.

For pansies are, I think, the littl...

We walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said
`The will of God be done!'

A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering grey;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass
And by the steaming rills
We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.

`Our work,' said I, `was well begun;
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?'

A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:

`Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this, which I have left
Full...

Saddle and ride, I heard a man say,
Out of Ben Bulben and Knocknarea,
i(What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?)
All those tragic characters ride
But turn from Rosses' crawling tide,
The meet's upon the mountain-side.
i(A slow low note and an iron bell.)
What brought them there so far from their home.
Cuchulain that fought night long with the foam,
i(What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?)
Niamh that rode on it; lad and lass
That sat so still and played at the chess?
What but heroic wantonness?
i(A slow low note and an iron bell.)
Aleel, his Countess; Hanrahan
That seemed but a wild wenching man;
i(What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower?)
And all alone comes riding there
The King that could make his people stare,
Because he ha...

Dropt here and there upon the flower
I love the dew to see,
For then returns the even's hour
That is so dear to me,
When silence reigns upon the plain,
And night hides all, or nearly;
For then I meet the smiles again
Of her I love so dearly.

O how I love yon dusky plains,
Though others there may be
As much belov'd by other swains,
But none so dear to me:
Their thorn-buds smell as sweet the while,
Their brooks may run as clearly;
But what are they without the smile
Of her I love so dearly.

In yonder bower the maid I've met,
Whom still I love to meet;
The dew-drops fall, the sun has set,
O evening thou art sweet!
Hope's eye fain breaks the misty glooms,
The time's expir'd, or nearly--
Ah, faithful still, and here she com...

Now sleeps the land of houses,
and dead night holds the street,
And there thou liest, my baby,
and sleepest soft and sweet;
My man is away for awhile,
but safe and alone we lie,
And none heareth thy breath but thy mother,
and the moon looking down from the sky
On the weary waste of the town,
as it looked on the grass-edged road
Still warm with yesterday's sun,
when I left my old abode;
Hand in hand with my love,
that night of all nights in the year;
When the river of love o'erflowed
and drowned all doubt and fear,
And we two were alone in the world,
and once if never again,
We knew of the secret of earth
and the tale of its labour and pain.

Lo amidst London I lift thee,
and how little and light thou art,
And thou without hop...

As I ebb'd with 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,
Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
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 windrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide,
Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me...

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eye I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At on...

Her gown was simple woven wool,
But, in repayment,
Her body sweet made beautiful
The simplest raiment:

For all its fine, melodious curves
With life a-quiver
Were graceful as the bends and swerves
Of her own river.

Her round arms, from the shoulders down
To sweet hands slender,
The sun had kissed them amber-brown
With kisses tender.

For though she loved the secret shades
Where ferns grow stilly,
And wild vines droop their glossy braids,
And gleams the lily,

And Nature, with soft eyes that glow
In gloom that glistens,
Unto her own heart, beating slow,
In silence listens:

She loved no less the meadows fair,
And green, and spacious;
The river, and the azure air,
And sunlight gracious.

I sa...

I

"Why are your songs all wild and bitter sad
As funeral dirges with the orphans' cries?
Each night since first the world was made hath had
A sequent day to laugh it down the skies.
Chant us a glee to make our hearts rejoice,
Or seal in silence this unmanly moan."
My friend, I have no power to rule my voice
A spirit lifts me where I lie alone,
And thrills me into song by its own laws;
That which I feel, but seldom know, indeed
Tempering the melody it could not cause.
The bleeding heart cannot forever bleed
Inwardly solely; on the wan lips, too,
Dark blood will bubble ghastly into view.


II

Striving to sing glad songs, I but attain
Wild discords sadder than Grief's saddest tune;
As if an owl with his harsh screech should strain<...