Betrayal

Valour and Innocence
Have latterly gone hence
To certain death by certain shame attended.
Envy, ah! even to tears!
The fortune of their years
Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.

Scarce had they lifted up
Life's full and fiery cup,
Than they had set it down untouched before them.
Before their day arose
They beckoned it to close,
Close in confusion and destruction o'er them.

They did not stay to ask
What prize should crown their task,
Well sure that prize was such as no man strives for;
But passed into eclipse,
Her kiss upon their lips,
Even Belphoebe's, whom they gave their lives for!

Like drifts of balm from cedared glens, those darling memories come,
With soft low songs, and dear old tales, familiar to our home.
Then breathe again that faint refrain, so tender, sad, and true,
My soul turns round with listening eyes unto the harp and you!
The fragments of a broken Past are floating down the tide,
And she comes gleaming through the dark, my love, my life, my bride!
Oh! sit and sing I know her well, that phantom deadly fair
With large surprise, and sudden sighs, and streaming midnight hair!
I know her well, for face to face we stood amongst the sheaves,
Our voices mingling with a mist of music in the leaves!
I know her well, for hand in hand we walked beside the sea,
And heard the huddling waters boom beneath this old Figtree.

God help the man that goes a...

HONORA, shou'd that cruel time arrive
    When 'gainst my truth thou should'st my errors poize,
    Scorning remembrance of our vanish'd joys;
    When for the love-warm looks, in which I live,
But cold respect must greet me, that shall give
    No tender glance, no kind regretful sighs;
    When thou shalt pass me with averted eyes,
    Feigning thou see'st me not, to sting, and grieve,
And sicken my sad heart, I cou'd not bear
    Such dire eclipse of thy soul-cheering rays;
    I cou'd not learn my struggling heart to tear
From thy lov'd form, that thro' my memory strays;
    Nor in the pale horizon of Despair
    Endure the wintry and the darken'd days.

April 1773.

There met three knights on the woodland way,
And the first was clad in silk array:
The second was dight in iron and steel,
But the third was rags from head to heel.
"Lo, now is the year and the day come round
When we must tell what we have found."
The first said: "I have found a king
Who grudgeth no gift of anything."
The second said: "I have found a knight
Who hath never turned his back in fight."
But the third said: "I have found a love
That Time and the World shall never move."

Whither away to win good cheer?
"With me," said the first, "for my king is near."
So to the King they went their ways;
But there was a change of times and days.
"What men are ye," the great King said,
"That ye should eat my children's bread?
My waste has fed full many...

All silent is the room,
There is no stir of breath,
Save mine, as in the gloom
I sit alone with Death.

Short life it had, the sweet,
Small babe here lying dead,
With tapers at its feet
And tapers at its head.

Dear little hands, too frail
Their grasp on life to hold;
Dear little mouth so pale,
So solemn, and so cold;

Small feet that nevermore
About the house shall run;
Thy little life is o’er!
Thy little journey done!

Sweet infant, dead too soon,
Thou shalt no more behold
The face of sun or moon,
Or starlight clear and cold;

Nor know, where thou art gone,
The mournfulness and mirth
We know who dwell upon
This sad, glad, mad, old earth.

The foolish hopes and fond
That cheat us to th...

He dreamed of hills so deep with woods
Storm-barriers on the summer sky
Are not more dark, where plunged loud floods
Down rocks of sullen dye.

Flat ways were his where sparsely grew
Gnarled, iron-colored oaks, with rifts,
Between dead boughs, of Eden-blue:
Ways where the speedwell lifts

Its shy appeal, and spreading far
The gold, the fallen gold of dawn
Staining each blossom's balanced star
Hollows of cowslips wan.

Where 'round the feet the lady-smock
And pearl-pale lady-slipper creep;
White butterflies upon them rock
Or seal-brown suck and sleep.

At eve the west shoots crooked fire
Athwart a half-moon leaning low;
While one white, arrowy star throbs higher
In curdled honey-glow.

Was it some elfin euphrasy

    Are you my songs, importunate of praise?
    Be still, remember for your comforting
    That sweeter birds have had less leave to sing
    Before men piped them from their lonely ways.

    Greener leaves than yours are lost in every spring
    Rubies far redder thrust their eager rays
    Into the blindfold dark for many days
    Before men chose them for a finger-ring.

    Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive not
    The passing fashion's prize, for dole or due -
    Men's summer-sweet unrecognition - grieve not:
    Oh, stoop not to them!    Better far that you
    Should go unsung than sing as you believe not,
    Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.

Woe to thee, Simon Magus! woe to you,
His wretched followers! who the things of God,
Which should be wedded unto goodness, them,
Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute
For gold and silver in adultery!
Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours
Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault
We now had mounted, where the rock impends
Directly o'er the centre of the foss.

Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art,
Which thou dost manifest in heaven, in earth,
And in the evil world, how just a meed
Allotting by thy virtue unto all!

I saw the livid stone, throughout the sides
And in its bottom full of apertures,
All equal in their width, and circular each,
Nor ample less nor larger they appear'd
Than in Saint John's fair dome of me belov'd
Those fr...

Tune - "I had a horse."



I.

    O poortith cauld, and restless love,
        Ye wreck my peace between ye;
    Yet poortith a' I could forgive,
            An' twere na' for my Jeanie.
                O why should fate sic pleasure have,
                    Life's dearest bands untwining?
                Or why sae sweet a flower as love
                    Depend on fortune's shining?

II.

    This warld's wealth when I think on,
        It's pride, and a' the lave o't
    Fie, fie on silly coward man,
        That he should be the slave o't!

III.

    Her een sae bonnie blue betray
        How she repays my passion;
    But prudence is her o'erword ay,
        She talks of rank and fashion.

Psyche moans, in deep-sunk, darksome prison,
For redemption; ah! for light she aches;
Fears, hopes, after every noise doth listen--
Whether Fate her bars of iron breaks.

Bound are Psyche's pinions--airy, soaring;
Yet high-hearted is she, groaning low;
Knows that under clouds whence rain is pouring
Sprouts the palm that crowns the victor's brow;

Knows among the thorns the rose yet reigneth;
Golden flowers spring from the desert grave
She her garland through denial gaineth,
And her strength is steeled by winds that rave.

'Tis through lack that she her blisses buyeth;
Sorrow's dream comes true by longing long;
Lest light break the sleep wherein she lieth,
Round her tree of life the shadows throng.

Psyche's wail is but a fluted sadness

In former times, such as had store of coin,
In wars at home or when for conquests bound,
For fear that some their treasure should purloin,
Gave it to keep to spirits within the ground;
    And to attend it them as strongly tied
Till they returned. Home when they never came,
Such as by art to get the same have tried,
From the strong spirit by no means force the same.
    Nearer men come, that further flies away,
Striving to hold it strongly in the deep.
Ev'n as this spirit, so you alone do play
With those rich beauties Heav'n gives you to keep;
    Pity so left to th' coldness of your blood,
    Not to avail you nor do others good.

For a summer festival at “The Laurels” on the Merrimac.


Once more on yonder laurelled height
The summer flowers have budded;
Once more with summer’s golden light
The vales of home are flooded;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim
The praises of our river,

Its pines above, its waves below,
The west-wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing,
And bore its memory o’er the deep,
To soothe a martyr’s sadness,
And fresco, in his troubled sleep,
His prison-walls with gladness.

We know the world is rich with streams
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through our dreams
Of human love and glory
We know that Arno’s...

The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,
And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,
Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the faery people know,
With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,
Whom the boyish South Wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping Rain;
Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again:
She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,
That could change the dew to glowworms and the glowworms into dew.
There's a thorn tree in the forest, and the faeries know the tree,
With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;
But the Maytime brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,
Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.
And all day the silence whispers ...

Ph. Charon! O gentle Charon! let me woo thee
    By tears and pity now to come unto me.
Ch. What voice so sweet and charming do I hear?
    Say what thou art. Ph. I prithee first draw near.
Ch. A sound I hear, but nothing yet can see;
    Speak, where thou art. Ph. O Charon pity me!
    I am a bird, and though no name I tell,
    My warbling note will say I'm Philomel.
Ch. What's that to me? I waft nor fish or fowls,
    Nor beasts, fond thing, but only human souls.
Ph. Alas for me! Ch. Shame on thy witching note
    That made me thus hoist sail and bring my boat:
    But I'll return; what mischief brought thee hither?
Ph. A deal of love and much, much grief together.
Ch. What's thy request? Ph.