Betrayal

    (After Robert Schumann.)


    Prelude.


Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July
    Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea:
    Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony
With the wild, restless tone of air and sky.
Shall we not call him Prospero who held
    In his enchanted hands the fateful key
    Of that tempestuous hour's mystery,
And with him to wander by a sun-bright shore,
    To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly
With disembodied Ariel once more
    Above earth's wrack and ruin?    Far and nigh
The laughter of the thunder echoed loud,
And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud.



    I.


Floating upon a swelling wave of sound,
    We seemed to overlook an endless sea:
    Poi...

Noonday and midnight shall at once be seen:
Trees, at one time, shall be both sere and green:
Fire and water shall together lie
In one self-sweet-conspiring sympathy:
Summer and winter shall at one time show
Ripe ears of corn, and up to th' ears in snow:
Seas shall be sandless; fields devoid of grass;
Shapeless the world, as when all chaos was,
Before, my dear Perilla, I will be
False to my vow, or fall away from thee.

Before me, careless lying,
Young Love his ware comes crying;
Full soon the elf untreasures
His pack of pains and pleasures,--
With roguish eye,
He bids me buy
From out his pack of treasures.

His wallet's stuffed with blisses,
With true-love-knots and kisses,
With rings and rosy fetters,
And sugared vows and letters;--
He holds them out
With boyish flout,
And bids me try the fetters.

Nay, Child (I cry), I know them;
There's little need to show them!
Too well for new believing
I know their past deceiving,--
I am too old
(I say), and cold,
To-day, for new believing!

But still the wanton presses,
With honey-sweet caresses,
And still, to my undoing,
He wins me, with his wooing,
To buy his ware
With...

Of Prometheus, how undaunted
    On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chanted,
    Full of promptings and suggestions.

Beautiful is the tradition
    Of that flight through heavenly portals,
The old classic superstition
Of the theft and the transmission
    Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring,
    Born of heavenward aspiration,
Then the fire with mortals sharing,
Then the vulture,--the despairing
    Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

All is but a symbol painted
    Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;
Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
    Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,
    In thei...

As through the wild green hills of Wyre
The train ran, changing sky and shire,
And far behind, a fading crest,
Low in the forsaken west
Sank the high-reared head of Clee,
My hand lay empty on my knee.
Aching on my knee it lay:
That morning half a shire away
So many an honest fellow's fist
Had well-nigh wrung it from the wrist.
Hand, said I, since now we part
From fields and men we know by heart,
From strangers' faces, strangers' lands,-
Hand, you have held true fellows' hands.
Be clean then; rot before you do
A thing they'd not believe of you.
You and I must keep from shame
In London streets the Shropshire name;
On banks of Thames they must not say
Severn breeds worse men than they;
And friends abroad must bear in mind
Friends at home ...

A shadowed form before the light,
A gleaming face against the night,
Clutched hands across a halo bright
Of blowing hair, - her fixed sight
Stares down where moving black, below,
The river's deathly waves in murmurous silence flow.

The moon falls fainting on the sky,
The dark woods bow their heads in sorrow,
The earth sends up a misty sigh:
A soul defies the morrow!

In the prison-house of the dark
    I lay with open eyes,
And pale beyond the pale windows
    I saw the dawn rise.
From past the bounds of space
    Where earthly vapours climb,
There stirred the voice I shall not hear
    On this side Time.
There is one death for the body,
    And one death for the heart,
And one prayer for the hope of the end,
    When some links part.
Christ, from uncounted leagues,
Beyond the sun and moon,
Strike with the sword of Thine own pity -
    Bring the dawn soon.

We, O Nature, depart:
Thou survivest us: this,
This, I know, is the law.
Yes, but more than this,
Thou who seest us die
Seest us change while we live;
Seest our dreams one by one,
Seest our errors depart:
Watchest us, Nature, throughout,
Mild and inscrutably calm.

Well for us that we change!
Well for us that the Power
Which in our morning prime
Saw the mistakes of our youth,
Sweet, and forgiving, and good,
Sees the contrition of age!

Behold, O Nature, this pair!
See them to-night where they stand,
Not with the halo of youth
Crowning their brows with its light,
Not with the sunshine of hope,
Not with the rapture of spring,
Which they had of old, when they stood
Years ago at my side
In this self same garden, an...

I buckle to my slender side
The pistol and the scimitar,
And in my maiden flower and pride
Am come to share the tasks of war.
And yonder stands my fiery steed,
That paws the ground and neighs to go,
My charger of the Arab breed,
I took him from the routed foe.

My mirror is the mountain spring,
At which I dress my ruffled hair;
My dimmed and dusty arms I bring,
And wash away the blood-stain there.
Why should I guard from wind and sun
This cheek, whose virgin rose is fled?
It was for one, oh, only one,
I kept its bloom, and he is dead.

But they who slew him, unaware
Of coward murderers lurking nigh,
And left him to the fowls of air,
Are yet alive, and they must die.
They slew him, and my virgin years
Are vowed to Greece and v...

Methought I saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Joves great Son to her glad Husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.
Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was vail'd, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O as to embrace me she enclin'd
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

            I.


The long-closed door, oh open it again, send me back once more my fawn that had fled.
On the day of our reunion, thou shalt rest by my side, there wilt thou shed over me the streams of thy delicious perfume.
Oh beautiful bride, what is the form of thy friend, that thou say to me, Release him, send him away?
He is the beautiful-eyed one of ruddy glorious aspect - that is my friend, him do thou detain.



            II.


Hail to thee, Son of my friend, the ruddy, the bright-colored one! Hail to thee whose temples are like a pomegranate.
Hasten to the refuge of thy sister, and protect the son of Isaiah against the troops of the Ammonites.
What art thou, O Beauty, that thou shouldst inspire love? that thy voice should ring like the voices of the bell...

Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live
As might from India's farthest plain
Recall the not unwilling Maid,
Assist me to detain
The lovely Fugitive:
Check with thy notes the impulse which, betrayed
By her sweet farewell looks, I longed to aid.
Here let me gaze enrapt upon that eye,
The impregnable and awe-inspiring fort
Of contemplation, the calm port
By reason fenced from winds that sigh
Among the restless sails of vanity.
But if no wish be hers that we should part,
A humbler bliss would satisfy my heart.
Where all things are so fair,
Enough by her dear side to breathe the air
Of this Elysian weather;
And, on or in, or near, the brook, espy
Shade upon the sunshine lying
Faint and somewhat pensively;
And downward Image gaily vying

Helen of Troy has sprung from Hell
To claim her ancient throne,
So we have bidden friends farewell
To follow her alone.

The Lady of the laurelled brow,
The Queen of pride and power,
Looks rather like a phantom now,
And rather like a flower.

Deep in her eyes the lamp of night
Burns with a secret flame,
Where shadows pass that have no sight,
And ghosts that have no name.

For mute is battle's brazen horn
That rang for Priest and King,
And she who drank of that brave morn
Is pale with evening.

An hour there is when bright words flow,
A little hour for sleep,
An hour between, when lights are low,
And then she seems to weep,

But no less lovely than of old
She shines, and almost hears
The horns that blew in ...

Sadly as some old mediaeval knight
    Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
    The sword two-handed and the shining shield
    Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
    Of tourney or adventure in the field
    Came over him, and tears but half concealed
    Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
    My ornaments and arms of other days;
    Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
    Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
    In which I walked, now clouded and confused.

In an old world garden dreaming,
Where the flowers had human names,
Methought, in fantastic seeming,
They disported as squires and dames.

Of old in Rosamond's Bower,
With it's peacock hedges of yew,
One could never find the flower
Unless one was given the clue;
So take the key of the wicket,
Who would follow my fancy free,
By formal knot and clipt thicket,
And smooth greensward so fair to see

And while Time his scythe is whetting,
Ere the dew from the grass has gone,

The Four Seasons' flight forgetting,
As they dance round the dial stone;

With a leaf from an old English book,
A Jonquil will serve for a pen.

Let us note from the green arbour's nook,
Flowers masking like women and men.


FIRST in VENUS'...

Between a meadow and a cloud that sped
In rain and twilight, in desire and fear.
I heard a secret--hearken in your ear,
'Behold the daisy has a ring of red.'

That hour, with half of blessing, half of ban,
A great voice went through heaven, and earth and hell,
Crying, 'We are tricked, my great ones, is it well?
Now is the secret stolen by a man.'

Then waxed I like the wind because of this,
And ran, like gospel and apocalypse,
From door to door, with new anarchic lips,
Crying the very blasphemy of bliss.

In the last wreck of Nature, dark and dread,
Shall in eclipse's hideous hieroglyph,
One wild form reel on the last rocking cliff,
And shout, 'The daisy has a ring of red.'

The moon has set: while yet the dawn
Breaks cold and gray,
Between the midnight and the morn
Bear off your prey!
On, swift and still! the conscious street
Is panged and stirred;
Tread light! that fall of serried feet
The dead have heard!
The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins
Gushed where ye tread;
Lo! through the dusk the martyr-stains
Blush darkly red!
Beneath the slowly waning stars
And whitening day,
What stern and awful presence bars
That sacred way?
What faces frown upon ye, dark
With shame and pain?
Come these from Plymouth's Pilgrim bark?
Is that young Vane?
Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on
With mocking cheer?
Lo! spectral Andros, Hutchinson,
And Gage are here!
For ready mart or favoring blast
Through Mol...

        I

        IN NEW YORK

        He plays the deuce with my writing time,
        For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws;
        He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme,
        And he leaves me--well, God knows
        It takes the shine from a tunester's line
        When a little mate of the deathless Nine
        Pipes up under your nose!

        For listen, there is his voice again,
        Wistful and clear and piercing sweet.
        Where did the boy find such a strain
        To make a dead heart beat?
        And how in the name of care can he bear
        To jet such a fountain into the air
        In this gray gulch of a street?

        Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese?
        Umbria under the Apennine?