Betrayal

No fear lest praise should make us proud!
We know how cheaply that is won;
The idle homage of the crowd
Is proof of tasks as idly done.

A surface-smile may pay the toil
That follows still the conquering Right,
With soft, white hands to dress the spoil
That sun-browned valor clutched in fight.

Sing the sweet song of other days,
Serenely placid, safely true,
And o'er the present's parching ways
The verse distils like evening dew.

But speak in words of living power, -
They fall like drops of scalding rain
That plashed before the burning shower
Swept o' er the cities of the plain!

Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale, -
Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring,
And, smitten through their leprous mail,
Strike right and left in...

Adown the valley dripped a stream,
White lilies drooped on either side;
Our hearts, in spite of us, will dream
In such a place at eventide.

Bright wavelets wove the scarf of blue
That well became the valley fair,
And grassy fringe of greenest hue
Hung round its borders everywhere.

And where the stream, in wayward whirls,
Went winding in and winding out,
Lay shells, that wore the look of pearls
Without their pride, all strewn about.

And here and there along the strand,
Where some ambitious wave had strayed,
Rose little monuments of sand
As frail as those by mortals made.

And many a flower was blooming there
In beauty, yet without a name,
Like humble hearts that often bear
The gifts, but not the palm of fame.

The...

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on, that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

We are the Little Folk, we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you'll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak,
Rats gnawing cables in two,
Moths making holes in a cloak,
How they must love what they do!
Yes, and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they,
Working our works out of view,
Wa...

To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age's gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, I swear
I love it not! these things are less to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than the thistledown of summer air
Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof
Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life
Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof
Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,
Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife
Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

    Sitting in the spendthrift dark
    lilting pennies away,
    deciphering fate ... .
    The bed, a warm reach past
    the pillow
    like personal mortality in the
    incest breath of life.

    Warm stuff of dreams -
    the calender with its days mesh &
    march like soldiers
    dearly departed
    (cindered and bludgeoned)
    or the old sea-faring chest
    where all men are sailors
    past light's corner.

    Sturdy trudgeons,
    clock bursts thru the room
    mindful of time and aching,
    decaying things.

    Hallow's Eve in movements of the curtains -
    a remembered Rembrandt,
    self-portrait of the old man
    standing alone in a clammy room,
    idling the seconds, with drab

Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town
Met me walking on yonder way;
‘And have you lost your heart?’ she said;
‘And are you married yet, Edward Gray?’

Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me;
Bitterly weeping I turn’d away:
‘Sweet Emma Moreland, love no more
Can touch the heart of Edward Gray.

‘Ellen Adair she loved me well,
Against her father’s and mother’s will;
To-day I sat for an hour and wept
By Ellen’s grave, on the windy hill.

‘Shy she was, and I thought her cold,
Thought her proud, and fled over the sea;
Fill’d I was with folly and spite,
When Ellen Adair was dying for me.

‘Cruel, cruel the words I said!
Cruelly came they back to-day:
“You’re too slight and fickle,” I said,
“To trouble the heart of Edward Gray.”

‘T...

I

My soul goes out to her who says,
"Come, follow me and cast off care!"
Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,
And like a flower before me sways
Between the green leaves and my gaze:
This creature like a girl, who smiles
Into my eyes and softly lays
Her hand in mine and leads me miles,
Long miles of haunted forest ways.

II

Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,
A fragrance that a flower exhaled
And God gave form to; now, unveiled,
A sunbeam making gold the gloom
Of vines that roof some woodland room
Of boughs; and now the silvery sound
Of streams her presence doth assume -
Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,
A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

III

Sometimes she seems the light that lies
On foam of w...

As much as 'twixt the third hour's close and dawn,
Appeareth of heav'n's sphere, that ever whirls
As restless as an infant in his play,
So much appear'd remaining to the sun
Of his slope journey towards the western goal.

Evening was there, and here the noon of night;
and full upon our forehead smote the beams.
For round the mountain, circling, so our path
Had led us, that toward the sun-set now
Direct we journey'd: when I felt a weight
Of more exceeding splendour, than before,
Press on my front. The cause unknown, amaze
Possess'd me, and both hands against my brow
Lifting, I interpos'd them, as a screen,
That of its gorgeous superflux of light
Clipp'd the diminish'd orb. As when the ray,
Striking On water or the surface clear
Of mirror, leaps unto t...

    Since now thou art about to leave
    Thy father's quiet house,
    And all the phantoms and illusions dear,
    That heaven-born fancies round it weave,
    And to this lonely region lend their charm,
    Unto the dust and noise of life condemned,
    By destiny, soon wilt thou learn to see
    Our wretchedness and infamy,
    My sister dear, who, in these mournful times,
    Alas, wilt more unhappy souls bestow
    On our unhappy Italy!
    With strong examples strengthen thou their minds;
    For cruel fate propitious gales
    Hath e'er to virtue's course denied,
    Nor in weak souls can purity reside.

    Thy sons must either poor, or cowards be.
    Prefer them poor. It is the custom still.
    Desert and fortune never yet were friends;

    I

Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces,
The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays
And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places,
Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais?

The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters
Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned.
Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought us
Far promise of the spring already northward turned.

And breast drew near to breast, and round its soft desire
My arm uncertain stole and clung there unrepelled.
I thought that nevermore my heart would hover nigher
To the last flower of bliss that Nature's garden held.

There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure,
The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering ...

1.
Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains, -
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams; -
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep;
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.

2.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,
With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm
In the rocks - with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind
It unsealed behind
The urns of the sil...

A midnight black with clouds is in the sky;
I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight
Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain
Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star
Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze,
From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth,
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass.
No sound of life is heard, no village hum,
Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path,
Nor rush of wing, while, on the breast of Earth,
I lie and listen to her mighty voice:
A voice of many tones, sent up from streams
That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen,
Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day,
And hollows of the great invisible hills,
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far
Into the ni...

        Let you not say of me when I am old,
        In pretty worship of my withered hands
        Forgetting who I am, and how the sands
        Of such a life as mine run red and gold
        Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold,
        Here walketh passionless age!"--for there expands
        A curious superstition in these lands,
        And by its leave some weightless tales are told.

        In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;
        I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;
        Impious no less in ruin than in strength,
        When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,
        Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site
        The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer."

I stood by the shore at the death of day,
As the sun sank flaming red;
And the face of the waters that spread away
Was as gray as the face of the dead.

And I heard the cry of the wanton sea
And the moan of the wailing wind;
For love's sweet pain in his heart had he,
But the gray old sea had sinned.

The wind was young and the sea was old,
But their cries went up together;
The wind was warm and the sea was cold,
For age makes wintry weather.

So they cried aloud and they wept amain,
Till the sky grew dark to hear it;
And out of its folds crept the misty rain,
In its shroud, like a troubled spirit.

For the wind was wild with a hopeless love,
And the sea was sad at heart
At many a crime that he wot of,
Wherein he had played hi...

    Blood, hatred, appetite and apathy,
    The sodden many and the struggling strong,
    Who care not now though for another wrong
    Another myriad innocents should die.
    At candid savagery or oily lie
    We laugh, or, turning, join the noisy throng
    Which buries the dead with gluttony and song.
    Suppose this very evening from on high
    Broke on the world that unexampled flame
    The choir-thronged sky, and Thou, descending, Lord;
    What agony of horror, fear, and shame,
    For those who knew and wearied of Thy word,
    I dare not even think, who am confest
    Idle, malignant, lustful as the rest.

[Supposed to be chanted to some rude instrument at a modern fireplace]


    Chant we the story now
    Tho' in a house we sleep;
    Tho' by a hearth of coals
    Vigil to-night we keep.
    Chant we the story now,
    Of the vague love we knew
    When I from out the sea
    Rose to the feet of you.

    Bird from the cliffs you came,
    Flew thro' the snow to me,
    Facing the icy blast
    There by the icy sea.
    How did I reach your feet?
    Why should I - at the end
    Hold out half-frozen hands
    Dumbly to you my friend?
    Ne'er had I woman seen,
    Ne'er had I seen a flame.
    There you piled fagots on,
    Heat rose - the blast to tame.
    There by the cave-door dark,
    Comforting me you crie...

The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word,
No gesture of reproach; the Heavens serene
Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean
Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord
Looked only, on the traitor. None record
What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen
Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen,
Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,
Have missed Jehovah at the judgment-call.
And Peter, from the height of blasphemy
'I never knew this man' did quail and fall
As knowing straight that God; and turned free
And went out speechless from the face of all
And filled the silence, weeping bitterly.

Remember me when I am gone away,
    Gone far away into the silent land;
    When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
    You tell me of our future that you planned:
    Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
    And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
    For if the darkness and corruption leave
    A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
    Than that you should remember and be sad.