Betrayal

Thrice hath the spring beheld thy faded fame
Since I exulting grasp'd the tuneful shell:
Eager through endless years to sound thy name,
Proud that my memory with thine should dwell.
How hast thou stain'd the splendor of my choice!
Those godlike forms which hover'd round thy voice,
Laws, freedom, glory, whither are they flown?
What can I now of thee to time report,
Save thy fond country made thy impious sport,
Her fortune and her hope the victims of thy own?
There are with eyes unmov'd and reckless heart
Who saw thee from thy summit fall thus low,
Who deem'd thy arm extended but to dart
The public vengeance on thy private foe.
But, spite of every gloss of envious minds,
The owl-ey'd race whom Virtue's lustre blinds,
Who sagely prove that each man hath his price...

The storm and peril overpast,
The hounding hatred shamed and still,
Go, soul of freedom! take at last
The place which thou alone canst fill.
Confirm the lesson taught of old
Life saved for self is lost, while they
Who lose it in His service hold
The lease of God's eternal day.
Not for thyself, but for the slave
Thy words of thunder shook the world;
No selfish griefs or hatred gave
The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled.
From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
We heard a tender under song;
Thy very wrath from pity grew,
From love of man thy hate of wrong.
Now past and present are as one;
The life below is life above;
Thy mortal years have but begun
Thy immortality of love.
With somewhat of thy lofty faith
We lay thy outworn garment by...

Dark spirit! who through every age
    Hast cast a baleful gloom;
Stern lord of strife and civil rage,
    The dungeon and the tomb!
What homage should men pay to thee,
Spirit of woe and anarchy?

Yet there are those who in thy train
    Can feel a fierce delight;
Who rush, exulting, to the plain,
    And triumph in the fight,
Where the red banner floats afar
Along the crimson tide of war.

Who is the knight on sable steed,
    That comes with thundering tread?
Dark warrior, slack thy furious speed,
    Nor trample on the dead:
A youthful chief before thee lies,
Struggling in life's last agonies.

Oh pause one moment in thy course,
    Those lineaments to trace;
Dost thou not feel a strange remorse,
    Whilst gazing on ...

Degenerate Douglas! oh, the unworthy Lord!
Whom mere despite of heart could so far please,
And love of havoc, (for with such disease
Fame taxes him,) that he could send forth word
To level with the dust a noble horde,
A brotherhood of venerable Trees,
Leaving an ancient dome, and towers like these,
Beggared and outraged! Many hearts deplored
The fate of those old Trees; and oft with pain
The traveller, at this day, will stop and gaze
On wrongs, which Nature scarcely seems to heed:
For sheltered places, bosoms, nooks, and bays,
And the pure mountains, and the gentle Tweed,
And the green silent pastures, yet remain.

"Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone
Wi' the auld moone in hir arme."
'Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, Percy's Reliques.'


Once I could hail (howe'er serene the sky)
The Moon re-entering her monthly round,
No faculty yet given me to espy
The dusky Shape within her arms imbound,
That thin memento of effulgence lost
Which some have named her Predecessor's ghost.

Young, like the Crescent that above me shone,
Nought I perceived within it dull or dim;
All that appeared was suitable to One
Whose fancy had a thousand fields to skim;
To expectations spreading with wild growth,
And hope that kept with me her plighted troth.

I saw (ambition quickening at the view)
A silver boat launched on a boundless flood;
A pearly crest, like Dian's when...

Well may you sit within, and, fond of grief,
Look in each other's face, and melt in tears.
Well may you shun all counsel, all relief.
Oh she was great in mind, tho' young in years!

Chang'd is that lovely countenance, which shed
Light when she spoke; and kindled sweet surprise,
As o'er her frame each warm emotion spread,
Play'd round her lips, and sparkled in her eyes.

Those lips so pure, that mov'd but to persuade,
Still to the last enliven'd and endear'd.
Those eyes at once her secret soul convey'd,
And ever beam'd delight when you appear'd.

Yet has she fled the life of bliss below,
That youthful Hope in bright perspective drew?
False were the tints! false as the feverish glow
That o'er her burning cheek Distemper threw!

And now in joy...

Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew
Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.

Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them where they endure
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for ...

The phantoms of times forgotten
Arise from out their grave,
And show me how once in thy presence
I lived the life it gave.

In the day I wandered dreaming,
Through the streets with unsteady foot;
The people looked at me in wonder,
I was so mournful and mute.

At night, then it was better,
For empty was the town;
I and my shadow together
Walked speechless up and down.

My way, with echoing footstep,
Over the bridge I took;
The moon broke out of the waters,
And gave me a meaning look.

I stopped before thy dwelling,
And gazed, and gazed again--
Stood staring up at thy window,
My heart was in such pain.

I know that thou from thy window
Didst often look downward--and
Sawest me, there in the moonlight,
A ...

Alexis, here she stay’d; among these pines,
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair;
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines.
She set her by these muskèd eglantines,
The happy place the print seems yet to bear:
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar’d lines,
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear.
Me here she first perceived, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o’erspread her face;
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,
And I first got a pledge of promised grace:
But ah! what served it to be happy so?
Sith passèd pleasures double but new woe?

A Song.


        Happy and free, securely blest,
        No beauty could disturb my rest;
        My amorous heart was in despair,
        To find a new victorious fair.

        Till you descending on our plains,
        With foreign force renew my chains:
        Where now you rule without control
        The mighty sovereign of my soul.

        Your smiles have more of conquering charms,
        Than all your native country arms;
        Their troops we can expel with ease,
        Who vanquish only when we please.

        But in your eyes, oh! there's the spell,
        Who can see them, and not rebel?
        You make us captives by your stay,
        Yet kill us if you go away.

Whether I loved you who shall say?
Whether I drifted down your way
In the endless River of Chance and Change,
And you woke the strange
Unknown longings that have no names,
But burn us all in their hidden flames,
    Who shall say?

Life is a strange and a wayward thing:
We heard the bells of the Temples ring,
The married children, in passing, sing.
The month of marriage, the month of spring,
Was full of the breath of sunburnt flowers
That bloom in a fiercer light than ours,
And, under a sky more fiercely blue,
    I came to you!

You told me tales of your vivid life
Where death was cruel and danger rife -
Of deep dark forests, of poisoned trees,
Of pains and passions that scorch and freeze,
Of southern noontides and eastern nights,

Now the sweet Dawn on brighter fields afar
Has walked among the daisies, and has breathed
The glory of the mountain winds, and sheathed
The stubborn sword of Night's last-shining star.
In Bathrolaire when Day's old doors unbar
The motley mask, fantastically wreathed,
Pass through a strong portcullis brazen teethed,
And enter glowing mines of cinnabar.
Stupendous prisons shut them out from day,
Gratings and caves and rayless catacombs,
And the unrelenting rack and tourniquet
Grind death in cells where jetting gaslight gloams,
And iron ladders stretching far away
Dive to the depths of those eternal domes.

From "Arion," an unpublished Masque

I


He. Aglai-a! Aglai-a!
            Sweet, awaken and be glad.
She. Who is this that calls Aglaia?
            Is it thou, my dearest lad?
He. 'Tis Arion, 'tis Arion,
            Who calls thee from sleep--
        From slumber who bids thee
        To follow and number
            His kids and his sheep.
She. Nay, leave to entreat me!
            If mother should spy on
        Us twain, she would beat me.
He. Then come, my love, come!
        And hide with Arion
            Where green woods are dumb!

She. Ar-i-on! Ar-i-on!
                Closer, list! I am afraid!

He. Whisper, then, thy love Arion,
                Fr...

    Divinely strong and beautiful in soul!
        With more than melody of mortal voice!
    The free thy spirit's majesty extol,
        When Liberty is made thy Muse's choice.
    And then how pure and pleasing is thy song,
        When Beauty - goddess of thy mind - its theme!
    But most to thee those sweet, sad strains belong,
        Where Truth we find through musing's fitful dream:
    And trace Uncertainty and how it gropes
        Through this and time to come with faltering feet,
    And vanity of Pleasure, and the Hopes
        Which Fear enfeebles and the Fates defeat:
    Strains oft as if at thy once-sung desire
        The wild west wind had ta'en thee for its lyre.

How long will this harp which you once loved to hear
Cheat your lips of a smile or your eyes of a tear?
How long stir the echoes it wakened of old,
While its strings were unbroken, untarnished its gold?

Dear friends of my boyhood, my words do you wrong;
The heart, the heart only, shall throb in my song;
It reads the kind answer that looks from your eyes, -
"We will bid our old harper play on till he dies."

Though Youth, the fair angel that looked o'er the strings,
Has lost the bright glory that gleamed on his wings,
Though the freshness of morning has passed from its tone
It is still the old harp that was always your own.

I claim not its music, - each note it affords
I strike from your heart-strings, that lend me its chords;
I know you will listen and ...

Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side
Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall.
In every touch more intimate meanings hide;
And flaming brains are the white heart of all.

Here, million pulses to one centre beat:
Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone,
Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet
On the sheer point where sense with knowing's one.

Here the green-purple clanging royal night,
And the straight lines and silent walls of town,
And roar, and glare, and dust, and myriad white
Undying passers, pinnacle and crown

Intensest heavens between close-lying faces
By the lamp's airless fierce ecstatic fire;
And we've found love in little hidden places,
Under great shades, between the mist and mire.

Stay! though the woo...

On these green banks, where falls too soon
The shade of Autumn's afternoon,
The south wind blowing soft and sweet,
The water gliding at nay feet,
The distant northern range uplit
By the slant sunshine over it,
With changes of the mountain mist
From tender blush to amethyst,
The valley's stretch of shade and gleam
Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream,
With glad young faces smiling near
And merry voices in my ear,
I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might
In Iran's Garden of Delight.
For Persian roses blushing red,
Aster and gentian bloom instead;
For Shiraz wine, this mountain air;
For feast, the blueberries which I share
With one who proffers with stained hands
Her gleanings from yon pasture lands,
Wild fruit that art and culture spoil,
The harvest o...

Man, with which to pay his ransom,
has two fields of deep rich earth,
which he must dig and bring to birth,
with the iron blade of reason.

To obtain the smallest rose,
to garner a few ears of wheat,
he must wet them without cease,
with briny tears from his grey brow.

One is Art: Love is the other.
To render his propitiation,
on the day of conflagration,
when the last strict reckoning’s here,

full of crops’ and flowers’ displays
he will have to show his barns,
with those colours and those forms
that gain the Angels’ praise.