Betrayal

 AN OLD STORY.


I.
It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.

II.
The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels
But give me your sun from yonder skies!”
They had answered, “And afterward, what else?”

III.
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
To give it my loving friends to keep.
Nought man could do, have I left undone:
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.

IV.
There’s nobody on the house-tops now
Just a palsied few at the windows set
For ...

When people tell me they have loved
    But once in youth,
I wonder, are they always moved
    To speak the truth?

Not that they wilfully deceive:
    They fondly cherish
A constancy which they would grieve
    To think might perish.

They cherish it until they think
    'Twas always theirs.
So, if the truth they sometimes blink,
    'Tis unawares.

Yet unawares, I must profess,
    They do deceive
Themselves, and those who questionless
    Their tale believe.

For I have loved, I freely own,
    A score of times,
And woven, out of love alone,
    A hundred rhymes.

Boys will be fickle.    Yet, when all
    Is said and done,
I was not one whom you could call
    A flirt--not one

Of those w...

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Amid the smoke of cities did you pass
The time of early youth; and there you learned,
From years of quiet industry, to love
The living Beings by your own fireside,
With such a strong devotion, that your heart
Is slow to meet the sympathies of them
Who look upon the hills with tenderness,
And make dear friendships with the streams and groves.
Yet we, who are transgressors in this kind,
Dwelling retired in our simplicity
Among the woods and fields, we love you well,
Joanna! and I guess, since you have been
So distant from us now for two long years,
That you will gladly listen to discourse,
However trivial, if you thence be taught
That they, with whom you once were happy, talk
Familiarly of you and of old times.
While I was seated, now some ten days past,

Now is past--the happy now
When we together roved
Beneath the wildwood's oak-tree bough
And Nature said we loved.
Winter's blast
The now since then has crept between,
And left us both apart.
Winters that withered all the green
Have froze the beating heart.
Now is past.

Now is past since last we met
Beneath the hazel bough;
Before the evening sun was set
Her shadow stretched below.
Autumn's blast
Has stained and blighted every bough;
Wild strawberries like her lips
Have left the mosses green below,
Her bloom's upon the hips.
Now is past.

Now is past, is changed agen,
The woods and fields are painted new.
Wild strawberries which both gathered then,
None know now where they grew.
The skys oercast.
Wood stra...

    Sitting patient in the shadow
    Till the blessed light shall come,
    A serene and saintly presence
    Sanctifies our troubled home.
    Earthly joys and hopes and sorrows
    Break like ripples on the strand
    Of the deep and solemn river
    Where her willing feet now stand.


    O my sister, passing from me,
    Out of human care and strife,
    Leave me, as a gift, those virtues
    Which have beautified your life.
    Dear, bequeath me that great patience
    Which has power to sustain
    A cheerful, uncomplaining spirit
    In its prison-house of pain.


    Give me, for I need it sorely,
    Of that courage, wise and sweet,
    Which has made the path of duty
    Green beneath your willing feet.
    Gi...

It all comes back as the end draws near;
All comes back like a tale of old!
Shall I tell you all? Will you lend an ear?
You, with your face so stern and cold;
You, who have found me dying here ...

Lady Leona's villa at Verne -
You have walked its terraces, where the fount
And statue gleam and the fluted urn;
Its world-old elms, that are avenues gaunt
Of shadow and flame when the West is a-burn.

'T is a lonely region of tarns and trees,
And hollow hills that circle the West;
Haunted of rooks and the far-off sea's
Immemorial vague unrest;
A land of sorrowful memories.

A gray sad land, where the wind has its will,
And the sun its way with the fruits and flowers;
Where ever the one all night is shrill,
And ever the other all day brings ...

(What the Mendicant Said)


    The moon's a monk, unmated,
    Who walks his cell, the sky.
    His strength is that of heaven-vowed men
    Who all life's flames defy.

    They turn to stars or shadows,
    They go like snow or dew -
    Leaving behind no sorrow -
    Only the arching blue.

Mourn, Mourn, ye Muses, all your loss deplore,
The Young, the Noble Strephon is no more.
Yes, yes, he fled quick as departing Light,
And ne're shall rise from Deaths eternal Night,
So rich a Prize the Stygian Gods ne're bore,
Such Wit, such Beauty, never grac'd their Shore.
He was but lent this duller World t'irnprove
In all the charms of Poetry, and Love;
Both were his gift, which freely he bestow'd,
And like a God, dealt to the wond'ring Crowd.
Scorning the little Vanity of Fame,
Spight of himself attain'd a Glorious name.
But oh! in vain was all his peevish Pride,
The Sun as soon might his vast Lustre hide,
As piercing, pointed, and more lasting bright,
As suffering no vicissitudes of Night.

Mourn, Mourn, ye Muses, all your loss deplore,
The Youn...

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated hear
Till someone really find us out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hid-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

    On that day
I shall put roses on roses, and cover your grave
With multitude of white roses: and since you were brave
    One bright red ray.

    So people, passing under
The ash-trees of the valley-road, will raise
Their eyes and look at the grave on the hill, in wonder,
    Wondering mount, and put the flowers asunder

    To see whose praise
Is blazoned here so white and so bloodily red.
Then they will say: "'Tis long since she is dead,
    Who has remembered her after many days?"

    And standing there
They will consider how you went your ways
Unnoticed among them, a still queen lost in the maze
    Of this earthly affair.

    A queen, they'll say,
Has slept unnoticed on a forgotten hill.
Sleeps on unknown, unnoticed the...

Strophe I

My two-fold Book! single in show
    But double in Contents,
Neat, but not curiously adorn'd
    Which in his early youth,
A poet gave, no lofty one in truth
Although an earnest wooer of the Muse--
Say, while in cool Ausonian[2] shades
    Or British wilds he roam'd,
Striking by turns his native lyre,
    By turns the Daunian lute
    And stepp'd almost in air,--

Antistrophe

Say, little book, what furtive hand
Thee from thy fellow books convey'd,
What time, at the repeated suit
        Of my most learned Friend,
I sent thee forth an honour'd traveller
From our great city to the source of Thames,
                    Caerulean sire!
Where rise the fountains and the raptures ring,
        Of the Aoni...

Just listen to mi stooary lads,
It's one will mak yo grieve;
It's full ov sich strange incidents;
Yo hardly can believe.
That lass aw cooarted, went one neet
Aght walkin wi' a swell;
They ovvertuk me on mi way,
An this is what befell.

They tuk me for a finger pooast;
Aw stood soa varry still;
An daan they set beside me,
Just at top o' Beacon Hill.
He sed shoo wor his deary;
Shoo sed he wor her pet;
'Twor an awkward sittiwation
Which aw shall'nt sooin forget.

Aw stood straight up at top o'th' hill, -
They set daan at mi feet;
He hugged her up soa varry cloise,
Aw thowt ther lips must meet.
He sed he loved wi' all his heart,
Shoo fainted reight away;
Aw darsn't luk, - aw darsn't start,
But aw wished misen away.

Blest land of Judea! thrice hallowed of song,
Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng;
In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea,
On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee.

With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore,
Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before;
With the glide of a spirit, I traverse the sod
Made bright by the steps of the angels of God.

Blue sea of the hills! in my spirit I hear
Thy waters, Genasseret, chime on my ear;
Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down,
And thy spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown.

Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green,
And the desolate hills of the wild Godarene;
And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see
The gleam of thy waters, oh dark Gallilee!

Methinks that I could trip o'er heaviest soil,
Light as a buoyant bark from wave to wave,
Were mine the trusty staff that Jewel gave
To youthful Hooker, in familiar style
The gift exalting, and with playful smile:
For thus equipped, and bearing on his head
The Donor's farewell blessing, can he dread
Tempest, or length of way, or weight of toil?
More sweet than odours caught by him who sails
Near spicy shores of Araby the blest,
A thousand times more exquisitely sweet,
The freight of holy feeling which we meet,
In thoughtful moments, wafted by the gales
From fields where good men walk, or bowers wherein they rest.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept,
So on a Delphic reed my idle spright
So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes,
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away:
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev'd a day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

The moth and beetle wing about
The garden ways of other days;
Above the hills, a fiery shout
Of gold, the day dies slowly out,
Like some wild blast a huntsman blows:
And o'er the hills my Fancy goes,
Following the sunset's golden call
Unto a vine-hung garden wall,
Where she awaits me in the gloom,
Between the lily and the rose,
With arms and lips of warm perfume,
The dream of Love my Fancy knows.

The glowworm and the firefly glow
Among the ways of bygone days;
A golden shaft shot from a bow
Of silver, star and moon swing low
Above the hills where twilight lies:
And o'er the hills my Longing flies,
Following the star's far-arrowed gold,
Unto a gate where, as of old,
She waits amid the rose and rue,
With star-bright hair and night-...

My heart forgot its God for love of you,
    And you forgot me, other loves to learn;
Now through a wilderness of thorn and rue
    Back to my God I turn.

And just because my God forgets the past,
    And in forgetting does not ask to know
Why I once left His arms for yours, at last
    Back to my God I go.