Betrayal

1.
That time is dead for ever, child!
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
We look on the past
And stare aghast
At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life's dark river.

2.
The stream we gazed on then rolled by;
Its waves are unreturning;
But we yet stand
In a lone land,
Like tombs to mark the memory
Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
In the light of life's dim morning.

She hastens out and scarcely pins her clothes
To hear the news and tell the news she knows;
She talks of sluts, marks each unmended gown,
Her self the dirtiest slut in all the town.
She stands with eager haste at slander's tale,
And drinks the news as drunkards drink their ale.
Excuse is ready at the biggest lie--
She only heard it and it passes bye.
The very cat looks up and knows her face
And hastens to the chair to get the place;
When once set down she never goes away,
Till tales are done and talk has nought to say.
She goes from house to house the village oer,
Her slander bothers everybody's door.

The woods waved welcome in the breeze,
    When, many years ago,
Lured by the songs of birds and bees,
    I sought the dell below;
And there, in that secluded spot,
    Where silver streamlets roved,
Twined the green ivy round the cot
    Of her I fondly loved.

In dreams still near that porch I stand
    To listen to her vow!
Still feel the pressure of her hand
    Upon my burning brow!
And here, as in the days gone by,
    With joy I meet her yet,
And mark the love-light of her eyes,
    Fringed with its lash of jet.

O fleeting vision of the past!
    From memory glide away!
Ye were too beautiful to last,
    Too good to longer stay!
But why, attesting evening star,
    This sermon sad recall:
"THAN LOVE AND LOSE 'TI...

A linnet who had lost her way
Sang on a blackened bough in Hell,
Till all the ghosts remembered well
The trees, the wind, the golden day.

At last they knew that they had died
When they heard music in that land,
And someone there stole forth a hand
To draw a brother to his side.

In the roar of the storm, in the wild bitter voice of the tempest-whipped sea,
The cry of my darling, my child, comes ever and ever to me;
And I stand where the haggard-faced wood stares down on a sinister shore,
But all that is left is the hood of the babe I can cherish no more.

A little blue hood, with the shawl of the girl that I took for my wife
In a happy old season, is all that remains of the light of my life;
The wail of a woman in pain, and the sob of a smothering bird,
They come through the darkness again in the wind and the rain they are heard.

Oh, women and men who have known the perils of weather and wave,
It is sad that my sweet ones are blown under sea without shelter of grave;
I sob like a child in the night, when the gale on the waters is loud
My darlings w...

Se 'l pensier che mi strugge.

HE SEEKS IN VAIN TO MITIGATE HIS WOE.


    Oh! that my cheeks were taught
By the fond, wasting thought
To wear such hues as could its influence speak;
Then the dear, scornful fair
Might all my ardour share;
And where Love slumbers now he might awake!
Less oft the hill and mead
My wearied feet should tread;
Less oft, perhaps, these eyes with tears should stream;
If she, who cold as snow,
With equal fire would glow--
She who dissolves me, and converts to flame.

Since Love exerts his sway,
And bears my sense away,
I chant uncouth and inharmonious songs:
Nor leaves, nor blossoms show,
Nor rind, upon the bough,
What is the nature that thereto belongs.
Love, and those beauteous eyes,

The Rose has left the garden,
Here she but faintly lives,
Lives but for me,
Within this little urn of pot-pourri
Of all that was
And never more can be,
While her black berries harden
On the wind-shaken tree.
Yet if my song a little fragrance gives,
'Tis not all loss,
Something I save
From the sweet grave
Wherein she lies,
Something she gave
That never dies,
Something that may still live
In these my words
That draw from her their breath,
And fain would be her birds
Still in her death.

    I.

    I cannot rest o' the night, Mother,
        For my heart is cold and wan:
    I fear the return o' light, Mother,
        Since my own true love is gone.
    O winsome aye was his face, Mother,
        And tender his bright blue eye;
    But his beauty and manly grace, Mother,
        Beneath the dark earth do lie.


    II.

    They tell me that I am young, Mother,
        That joy will return once more;
    But sorrow my heart has wrung, Mother,
        And I feel the wound full sore.
    The tree at the root frost-bitten
        Will flourish never again,
    And the woe that my life hath smitten
        Hath frozen each inmost vein.


    III.

    Whene'er the moon's shining clear, Mother,

Love, I recant,
And pardon crave
That lately I offended;
But 'twas,
Alas!
To make a brave,
But no disdain intended.

No more I'll vaunt,
For now I see
Thou only hast the power
To find
And bind
A heart that's free,
And slave it in an hour.

Beneath the moonlight and the snow
Lies dead my latest year;
The winter winds are wailing low
Its dirges in my ear.

I grieve not with the moaning wind
As if a loss befell;
Before me, even as behind,
God is, and all is well!

His light shines on me from above,
His low voice speaks within,
The patience of immortal love
Outwearying mortal sin.

Not mindless of the growing years
Of care and loss and pain,
My eyes are wet with thankful tears
For blessings which remain.

If dim the gold of life has grown,
I will not count it dross,
Nor turn from treasures still my own
To sigh for lack and loss.

The years no charm from Nature take;
As sweet her voices call,
As beautiful her mornings break,
As fair her even...

1

The lady of Alzerno's hall
Is waiting for her lord;
The blackbird's song, the cuckoo's call
No joy to her afford.
She smiles not at the summer's sun,
Nor at the winter's blast;
She mourns that she is still alone
Though three long years have passed.

2

I knew her when her eye was bright,
I knew her when her step was light
And blithesome as a mountain doe's,
And when her cheek was like the rose,
And when her voice was full and free,
And when her smile was sweet to see.

3

But now the lustre of her eye,
So dimmed with many a tear;
Her footstep's elasticity,
Is tamed with grief and fear;
The rose has left her hollow cheeks;
In low and mournful tone she speaks,
And when she smiles 'tis but a gleam

A Phantasy.


I know not how I found you
With your wild hair a-blow,
Nor why the world around you
Would never let me know:
Perhaps 't was Heaven relented,
Perhaps 't was Hell resented
My dream, and grimly vented
Its hate upon me so.

In Shadowland I met you
Where all dim shadows meet;
Within my heart I set you,
A phantom bitter-sweet:
No hope for me to win you,
Though I with soul and sinew
Strive on and on, when in you
There is no heart or heat!

Yet ever, aye, and ever,
Although I knew you lied,
I followed on, but never
Would your white form abide:
With loving arms stretched meward,
As Sirens beckon seaward
To some fair vessel leeward,
Before me you would glide.

But like an evil fairy,

I.

O, where are the friends that in youth we once knew,
Whose smiles were like sunshine, whose hearts were so true?
Alas! they are lost in the darkness and gloom
That veils them from sight in the cold, silent tomb!


II.

O, where are the years that forever have fled,
And over Life's morning their radiance shed?
With the Past written down on the unending scroll
Where Time--grim destroyer--his victims enroll!


III.

O, where are the fancies, the visions, the dreams,
That filled the young breast--with which memory teems?
They have faded away--from life they have passed--
Like stars blotted out when the sky's overcast!


IV.

O, where are the hopes that have beckoned us on
With their beacons of light, throu...

Where, under Loughrigg, the stream
Of Rotha sparkles, the fields
Are green, in the house of one
Friendly and gentle, now dead,
Wordsworth’s son-in-law, friend,
Four years since, on a mark’d
Evening, a meeting I saw.

Two friends met there, two fam’d
Gifted women. The one,
Brilliant with recent renown,
Young, unpractis’d, had told
With a Master’s accent her feign’d
Story of passionate life:
The other, maturer in fame,
Earning, she too, her praise
First in Fiction, had since
Widen’d her sweep, and survey’d
History, Politics, Mind.

They met, held converse: they wrote
In a book which of glorious souls
Held memorial: Bard,
Warrior, Statesman, had left
Their names:, chief treasure of all,
Scott had consign’d there his la...

Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
She would not know.

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
Saying ‘If thou wilt, thrust in thy si...

All her corn-fields rippled in the sunshine,
All her lovely vines, sweets-laden, bowed;
Yet some weeks to harvest and to vintage:
When, as one man's hand, a cloud
Rose and spread, and, blackening, burst asunder
In rain and fire and thunder.

Is there nought to reap in the day of harvest?
Hath the vine in her day no fruit to yield?
Yea, men tread the press, but not for sweetness,
And they reap a red crop from the field.
Build barns, ye reapers, garner all aright,
Though your souls be called to-night.

A cry of tears goes up from blackened homesteads,
A cry of blood goes up from reeking earth:
Tears and blood have a cry that pierces Heaven
Through all its Hallelujah swells of mirth;
God hears their cry, and though He tarry, yet
He doth not forget....

With noise of battle and the dust of fray,
Half hid in fog, the gloomy mountain lay;
But Succoth’s watchers, from their outer fields,
Saw fits of flame and gleams of clashing shields;
For, where the yellow river draws its spring,
The hosts of Israel travelled, thundering!
There, beating like the storm that sweeps to sea
Across the reefs of chafing Galilee,
The car of Abner and the sword of Saul
Drave Gaza down Gilboa’s southern wall;
But swift and sure the spears of Ekron flew,
Till peak and slope were drenched with bloody dew.
“Shout, Timnath, shout!” the blazing leaders cried,
And hurled the stone and dashed the stave aside.
“Shout, Timnath, shout! Let Hazor hold the height,
Bend the long bow and break the lords of fight!”

From every hand the swarthy s...

How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarre’d the benefit of rest?
When day’s oppression is not eas’d by night,
But day by night and night by day oppress’d,
And each, though enemies to either’s reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day, to please him thou art bright,
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even.
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,
And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger.