Betrayal

[R]

Mai non vo' più cantar, com' io soleva.

ENIGMAS.


    Never more shall I sing, as I have sung:
For still she heeded not; and I was scorn'd:
So e'en in loveliest spots is trouble found.
Unceasingly to sigh is no relief.
Already on the Alp snow gathers round:
Already day is near; and I awake.
An affable and modest air is sweet;
And in a lovely lady that she be
Noble and dignified, not proud and cold,
Well pleases it to find.
Love o'er his empire rules without a sword.
He who has miss'd his way let him turn back:
Who has no home the heath must be his bed:
Who lost or has not gold,
Will sate his thirst at the clear crystal spring.

I trusted in Saint Peter, not so now;
Let him who can my meaning understand.

We went by ways of bygone days,
Up mountain heights of story,
Where lost in vague, historic haze,
Tradition, crowned with battle-bays,
Sat 'mid her ruins hoary.

Where wing to wing the eagles cling
And torrents have their sources,
War rose with bugle voice to sing
Of wild spear thrust, and broadsword swing,
And rush of men and horses.

Then deep below, where orchards show
A home here, here a steeple,
We heard a simple shepherd go,
Singing, beneath the afterglow,
A love-song of the people.

As in the trees the song did cease,
With matron eyes and holy
Peace, from the cornlands of increase.
And rose-beds of love's victories,
Spake, smiling, of the lowly.

Why are ye silent, Birds?
Where do ye fly?
Winter's not violent,
With such a Spring sky.
The wheatlands are green, snow and frost are away,
Birds, why are ye silent on such a sweet day?

By the slated pig-stye
The redbreast scarce whispers:
Where last Autumn's leaves lie
The hedge sparrow just lispers.
And why are the chaffinch and bullfinch so still,
While the sulphur primroses bedeck the wood hill?

The bright yellow-hammers
Are strutting about,
All still, and none stammers
A single note out.
From the hedge starts the blackbird, at brook side to drink:
I thought he'd have whistled, but he only said "prink."

The tree-creeper hustles
Up fir's rusty bark;
All silent he bustles;
We needn't say hark.
There's no song i...

I.

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop.

II.

Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country’s very capital, its prince
Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

III.

Now, the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)

IV.

Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires
O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all
Made of marbl...

The fields are full of Poppies, and the skies are very blue,
By the Temple in the coppice, I wait, Beloved, for you.
The level land is sunny, and the errant air is gay,
With scent of rose and honey; will you come to me to-day?

From carven walls above me, smile lovers; many a pair.
"Oh, take this rose and love me!" she has twined it in her hair.
He advances, she retreating, pursues and holds her fast,
The sculptor left them meeting, in a close embrace at last.

Through centuries together, in the carven stone they lie,
In the glow of golden weather, and endless azure sky.
Oh, that we, who have for pleasure so short and scant a stay,
Should waste our summer leisure; will you come to me to-day?

The Temple bells are ringing, for the marriage month has come.
I hea...

Come round me, little childer;
There, don't fling stones at me
Because I mutter as I go;
But pity Moll Magee.
My man was a poor fisher
With shore lines in the say;
My work was saltin' herrings
The whole of the long day.
And sometimes from the Saltin' shed
I scarce could drag my feet,
Under the blessed moonlight,
Along thc pebbly street.
I'd always been but weakly,
And my baby was just born;
A neighbour minded her by day,
I minded her till morn.
I lay upon my baby;
Ye little childer dear,
I looked on my cold baby
When the morn grew frosty and clear.
A weary woman sleeps so hard!
My man grew red and pale,
And gave me money, and bade me go
To my own place, Kinsale.
He drove me out and shut the door.
And gave his curse ...

A brother wandered forth with me,
Beside a barren beach:
He harped on things beyond the sea,
And out of reach.

He hinted once of unknown skies,
And then I would not hark,
But turned away from steadfast eyes,
Into the dark.

And said “an ancient faith is dead
And wonder fills my mind:
I marvel how the blind have led
So long the blind.

“Behold this truth we only know
That night is on the land!
And we a weary way must go
To find God’s hand.”

I wept “Our fathers told us, Lord,
That Thou wert kind and just,
But lo! our wailings fly abroad
For broken trust.

“How many evil ones are here
Who mocking go about,
Because we are too faint with fear
To wrestle Doubt!

“Thy riddles are beyond the ken

    A youthful bandit
    this forest -
    faltering eyelids in mud troughs
    & puddles like
    brisk lies
    woven thru deception.

    Stealing autumn into
    its colours,
    leaves in birchbark rustle
    a full mauraud stealth
    across every breeze.

    Thief, thief
    elf with a key,
    a thousand rasping angels
    their throaty javelins
    hurled from branch's edge,
    brief pageant robbing
    summer's pantry.

    Offal of the fall,
    the lake a sequined glove
    tossed from a careless hand;
    a rowboat as a buckle
    chromatic foam
    for a finger's fan.

I

Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;
    So slowly that no human eye hath power
    To see it move!    Slowly in shine or shower
    The painted ship above it, homeward bound,
Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground;
    Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower
    The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour,
    A mellow, measured, melancholy sound.
Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
    The frontier town and citadel of night!
    The watershed of Time, from which the streams
Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,
    One to the land of promise and of light,
    One to the land of darkness and of dreams!

II

O River of Yesterday, with current swift
    Through chasms descending, and soon lost to sight,

(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)



For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.

There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
For unattainable food.

So fools are glad of the folly
That made them weep and sing,
And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne
And Drummond for his king.
They know that on flinty sorrow
And failure and desire
The steel of their souls...

Glion? Ah, twenty years, it cuts
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts.
Glion, but not the same!

And yet I know not! All unchanged
The turf, the pines, the sky!
The hills in their old order ranged;
The lake, with Chillon by!

And, 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff
And stony mounts the way,
The crackling husk-heaps burn, as if
I left them yesterday!

Across the valley, on that slope,
The huts of Avant shine!
lts pines, under their branches, ope
Ways for the pasturing kine.

Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,
Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,
Invite to rest the traveller there
Before he climb the pass

The gentian-flower'd pass, its crown
With yellow spires aflame;
Whence ...

O! call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue:
Use power with power, and slay me not by art,
Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:
What need’st thou wound with cunning, when thy might
Is more than my o’erpress’d defence can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

Massachusetts Bay, 1760.


The robins sang in the orchard, the buds into blossoms grew;
Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins knew!
Sick, in an alien household, the poor French neutral lay;
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April day,
Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's warp and woof,
On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs of roof,
The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the stand,
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from her sick hand.

What to her was the song of the robin, or warm morning light,
As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of sound or sight?

Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her bitter bread;
The world of the alien people lay behind her dim and dead.

Come, beneath yon verdant branches,
Come, my own, with me!
Come, and there my soul will open
Secret doors to thee.
Yonder shalt thou learn the secrets
Deep within my breast,
Where my love upsprings eternal;
Come! with pain opprest,
Yonder all the truth I'll tell thee,
Tell it thee with tears...
(Ah, so long have we been parted,
Years of youth, sweet years!)

See'st thou the dancers floating
On a stream of sound?
There alone, the soul entrancing,
Happiness is found!
Magic music, hark! it calls us,
Ringing wild and sweet!
One, two, three!--beloved, haste thee,
Point thy dainty feet!
Now at last I feel that living
Is no foolish jest...
(O sweet years of youth departed,
Vanished with the rest!)

Fiddler, play a lit...

To thy unhappy courts a lonely guest
I come, corroding Melancholy, where,
Sequester'd from the world, this woe-worn breast
May yet indulge a solitary tear!
For what should cheer the wretch's struggling heart;
What lead him thro' misfortunes gloomy shades;
When retrospection wings her keenest dart,
And hope's dim land in misery's ocean fades?
Adieu, for ever! visionary joys,
Delusive shadows of a short-liv'd hour;
The rod of woe invincible, destroys
The light, the fairy fabric of your pow'r!
How short of bliss the sublunary reign,
How long the clouded days of misery and pain!

I.
Here was I with my arm and heart
And brain, all yours for a word, a want
Put into a look, just a look, your part,
While mine, to repay it . . . vainest vaunt,
Were the woman, that’s dead, alive to hear,
Had her lover, that’s lost, love’s proof to show!
But I cannot show it; you cannot speak
From the churchyard neither, miles removed,
Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek,
Which stabs and stops, that the woman I loved
Needs help in her grave and finds none near,
Wants warmth from the heart which sends it so!

II.
Did I speak once angrily, all the drear days
You lived, you woman I loved so well,
Who married the other? Blame or praise,
Where was the use then? Time would tell,
And the end declare what man for you,
What woman for me, was t...

Far-Off the lily-statues stand white-ranked in the garden at home.
Would God they were shattered quickly, the cattle would tread them out in the loam.
I wish the elder trees in flower could suddenly heave, and burst
The walls of the house, and nettles puff out from the hearth at which I was nursed.

It stands so still in the hush composed of trees and inviolate peace,
The home of my fathers, the place that is mine, my fate and my old increase.
And now that the skies are falling, the world is spouting in fountains of dirt,
I would give my soul for the homestead to fall with me, go with me, both in one hurt.

I

I cannot heed the words they say,
The lights grow far away and dim,
Amid the laughing men and maids
My eyes unbidden seek for him.

I hope that when he smiles at me
He does not guess my joy and pain,
For if he did, he is too kind
To ever look my way again.

II

I have a secret in my heart
No ears have ever heard,
And still it sings there day by day
Most like a caged bird.

And when it beats against the bars,
I do not set it free,
For I am happier to know
It only sings for me.

III

I wrote his name along the beach,
I love the letters so.
Far up it seemed and out of reach,
For still the tide was low.

But oh, the sea came creeping up,
And washed the name away,
And on the san...