Betrayal

And what melodious sounds at times prevail!
And, ever and anon, how bright a gleam
Pours on the surface of the turbid Stream!
What heartfelt fragrance mingles with the gale
That swells the bosom of our passing sail!
For where, but on 'this' River's margin, blow
Those flowers of chivalry, to bind the brow
Of hardihood with wreaths that shall not fail?
Fair Court of Edward! wonder of the world!
I see a matchless blazonry unfurled
Of wisdom, magnanimity, and love;
And meekness tempering honourable pride;
The lamb is couching by the lion's side,
And near the flame-eyed eagle sits the dove.

Let me go back again. There is the road,
O memory! The humble garden lane
So young with me. Let me rebuild again
The start of faith and hope by that abode;
Amend with morning freshness all the code
Of youth's desire; remap my chart's demesne
With tuneful joy, and plan a far campaign
For better marches in ambition's mode.

Ah, no, my heart! More certain now the skies
For joy abide: the cage of tree and sod,
Horizons firm that faith and hope attain,
Far realms of innocence in children's eyes,
And hearts harmonious with the will of God:--
These might I miss if I were back again.

As o'er these hills I take my silent rounds,
Still on that vision which is flown I dwell,
On images I loved, alas, too well!
Now past, and but remembered like sweet sounds
Of yesterday! Yet in my breast I keep
Such recollections, painful though they seem,
And hours of joy retrace, till from my dream
I start, and find them not; then I could weep
To think how Fortune blights the fairest flowers;
To think how soon life's first endearments fail,
And we are still misled by Hope's smooth tale,
Who, like a flatterer, when the happiest hours
Pass, and when most we call on her to stay,
Will fly, as faithless and as fleet as they!

Cities and men, and nations, have passed by,
Like leaves upon an autumn's dreary sky;
Like chaff upon the ocean billow proud,
Like drops of rain on summer's fleecy cloud;
Like flowers of a wilderness,
Vanished into forgetfulness.

O! Nineveh, thou city of young Ashur's pride,
With thy strong towers, and thy bulwarks wide;
Ah! while upon thee splashed the Tigris' waters,
How little thought thy wealth-stored sons and daughters,

That Cyaxerses and his troops should wait
Three long years before thy massive gate;
Then Medes and Persians, by the torches' light,
Should ride triumphantly thy streets by night;
And from creation banish thee,
O! Nineveh. O! Nineveh.

And country of the pride of Mizriam's heart,
With pyramids that speak thy wealth and...

They are not those who used to feed us
When we were young - they cannot be -
These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?
They are not those who used to feed us, -
For would they not fair terms concede us?
- If hearts can house such treachery
They are not those who used to feed us
When we were young - they cannot be!

"Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico." - HORACE.


Dear LONG, in this sequester'd scene,
While all around in slumber lie,
The joyous days, which ours have been
Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye;
Thus, if, amidst the gathering storm,
While clouds the darken'd noon deform,
Yon heaven assumes a varied glow,
I hail the sky's celestial bow,
Which spreads the sign of future peace,
And bids the war of tempests cease.
Ah! though the present brings but pain,
I think those days may come again;
Or if, in melancholy mood,
Some lurking envious fear intrude,
To check my bosom's fondest thought,
And interrupt the golden dream,
I crush the fiend with malice fraught,
And, still, indulge my wonted theme.
Although we ne'er again can trace,
In Gra...

    Let the little birds sing;
        Let the little lambs play;
    Spring is here; and so 'tis spring;--
        But not in the old way!

    I recall a place
        Where a plum-tree grew;
    There you lifted up your face,
        And blossoms covered you.

    If the little birds sing,
        And the little lambs play,
    Spring is here; and so 'tis spring--
        But not in the old way!

Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light; -
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all...

Ah! know ye not in Israel
A prince is fallen to-day,
A just man, from the ills to come,
In mercy called away!

The Church is clothed in mourning,
Who shall supply her loss?
A standard bearer's quit the field,
A soldier of the cross.

On mission high and holy
He braved the watery main,
And many a faithful heart rejoiced
To welcome him again.

Thrice had the veteran warrior
Nobly forsaken all,
And trod our western wilderness
Obedient to His call,

Whose voice he knew from childhood,
And followed where it led,
For perfect love reigned over him,
And banished fear and dread.

Meekly he journeyed onward,
Unmoved by praise or blame;
The mark was always kept in view,
And steady was his aim.

Unfalte...

1.
The world is now our dwelling-place;
Where'er the earth one fading trace
Of what was great and free does keep,
That is our home!...
Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race
Shall our contented exile reap;
For who that in some happy place
His own free thoughts can freely chase
By woods and waves can clothe his face
In cynic smiles? Child! we shall weep.

2.
This lament,
The memory of thy grievous wrong
Will fade...
But genius is omnipotent
To hallow...

[Written to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World]


    My Sweetheart is the TRUTH BEYOND THE MOON,
    And never have I been in love with Woman,
    Always aspiring to be set in tune
    With one who is invisible, inhuman.

    O laughing girl, cold TRUTH has stepped between,
    Spoiling the fevers of your virgin face:
    Making your shining eyes but lead and clay,
    Mocking your brilliant brain and lady's grace.

    TRUTH haunted me the day I wooed and lost,
    The day I wooed and won, or wooed in play:
    Tho' you were Juliet or Rosalind,
    Thus shall it be, forever and a day.

    I doubt my vows, tho' sworn on my own blood,
    Tho' I draw toward you weeping, soul to soul,
    I have a lonely goal beyond the moon;
    Ay...

O wanderer! whoever thou mayest be,
    I beg of thee to pass in silence here
    And leave me with my empty sepulchre
Beside the ceaseless turmoil of the sea;
Pass me as one whom life's old tragedy
    Hath made distraught--who now in dreams doth keep
    His cherished dead, unmindful of her sleep
In ocean's bosom locked eternally!
Scorn not the foolish grave that I have made
    Beside the deep sea of my soul's unrest,
But let me hope that when the storms are stayed
    My phantom ship shall sail from out the west
Bringing the boon for which I long have prayed--
    The broken vigil and the ended quest.

    'Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief.'


I

Highway, stretched along the sun,
Highway, thronged till day is done;
Where the drifting Face replaces
Wave on wave on wave of faces,
And you count them, one by one:
        'Rich man--Poor man--Beggar man--Thief:
        Doctor--Lawyer--Merchant--Chief.'
Is it soothsay?--Is it fun?

Young ones, like as wave and wave;
Old ones, like as grave and grave;
Tide on tide of human faces
With what human undertow!
Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief!--
Tell me of the eddying spaces,
Show me where the lost ones go;
Like and lost, as leaf and leaf.
What's your secret grim refrain
Back and forth and back again,
Once, and now, and alway...

I.

No more to strip the roses from
The rose-boughs of her porch's place!
I dreamed last night that I was home
Beside a rose her face.

I must have smiled in sleep who knows?
The rose aroma filled the lane;
I saw her white hand's lifted rose
That called me home again.

And yet when I awoke so wan,
An old face wet with icy tears!
Somehow, it seems, sleep had misdrawn
A love gone thirty years.

II.

The clouds roll up and the clouds roll down
Over the roofs of the little town;
Out in the hills where the pike winds by
Fields of clover and bottoms of rye,
You will hear no sound but the barking cough
Of the striped chipmunk where the lane leads off;
You will hear no bird but the sapsuckers
Far off in the forest, tha...

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring’s unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year’s friends together.

One have I marked, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest:
Hail to Thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.

While birds, and butterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment:
A Life, a Presence like the Air,
Scattering thy...

Stop rowing! This one of our bye-canals
O’er a certain bridge you have to cross
That’s named, “Of the Angel:” listen why!
The name “Of the Devil” too much appalls
Venetian acquaintance, so, his the loss,
While the gain goes . . . look on high!

An angel visibly guards yon house:
Above each scutcheon, a pair, stands he,
Enfolds them with droop of either wing:
The family’s fortune were perilous
Did he thence depart, you will soon agree,
If I hitch into verse the thing.

For, once on a time, this house belonged
To a lawyer of note, with law and to spare,
But also with overmuch lust of gain:
In the matter of law you were nowise wronged,
But alas for the lucre! He picked you bare
To the bone. Did folk complain?

“I exact,” growled he, “work...

The frightened herds of clouds across the sky
Trample the sunshine down, and chase the day
Into the dusky forest-lands of gray
And sombre twilight. Far and faint, and high,
The wild goose trails his harrow, with a cry
Sad as the wail of some poor castaway
Who sees a vessel drifting far astray
Of his last hope, and lays him down to die.
The children, riotous from school, grow bold
And quarrel with the wind whose angry gust
Plucks off the summer-hat, and flaps the fold
Of many a crimson cloak, and twirls the dust
In spiral shapes grotesque, and dims the gold
Of gleaming tresses with the blur of rust.

(Sung, on one night, in the cities, in the darkness.)



Come away! Come away!
Ye are sober and dull through the common day,
But now it is night!
It is shameful night, and God is asleep!
(Have you not felt the quick fires that creep
Through the hungry flesh, and the lust of delight,
And hot secrets of dreams that day cannot say?).
The house is dumb;
The night calls out to you. Come, ah, come!
Down the dim stairs, through the creaking door,
Naked, crawling on hands and feet
It is meet! it is meet!
Ye are men no longer, but less and more,
Beast and God. . . . Down the lampless street,
By little black ways, and secret places,
In the darkness and mire,
Faint laughter around, and evil faces
By the star-glint seen, ah! follow with us!
F...