Betrayal

'We're going home!' I heard two lovers say,
    They kissed their friends and bade them bright good-byes;
    I hid the deadly hunger in my eyes,
And, lest I might have killed them, turned away.
Ah, love! we too once gambolled home as they,
    Home from the town with such fair merchandise, -
    Wine and great grapes - the happy lover buys:
A little cosy feast to crown the day.

Yes! we had once a heaven we called a home
    Its empty rooms still haunt me like thine eyes,
When the last sunset softly faded there;
Each day I tread each empty haunted room,
        And now and then a little baby cries,
    Or laughs a lovely laughter worse to bear.

        We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
        Well, such you are,--but well enough we know
        How thick about us root, how rankly grow
        Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,
        That flourish through neglect, and soon must send
        Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow
        Our steady senses; how such matters go
        We are aware, and how such matters end.
        Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;
        With lovers such as we forevermore
        Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere
        Receives the Table's ruin through her door,
        Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,
        Lets fall the colored book upon the floor.

Let me talk of years evanished, let me harp upon the time
When we trod these sands together, in our boyhood’s golden prime;
Let me lift again the curtain, while I gaze upon the past,
As the sailor glances homewards, watching from the topmost mast.
Here we rested on the grasses, in the glorious summer hours,
When the waters hurried seaward, fringed with ferns and forest flowers;
When our youthful eyes, rejoicing, saw the sunlight round the spray
In a rainbow-wreath of splendour, glittering underneath the day;
Sunlight flashing past the billows, falling cliffs and crags among,
Clothing hopeful friendship basking on the shores of Wollongong.

Echoes of departed voices, whispers from forgotten dreams,
Come across my spirit, like the murmurs of melodious streams.
Here we both hav...

Out of my heart, one day, I wrote a song,
With my heart's blood imbued,
Instinct with passion, tremulously strong,
With grief subdued;
Breathing a fortitude
Pain-bought.
And one who claimed much love for what I wrought,
Read and considered it,
And spoke:
"Ay, brother,--'t is well writ,
But where's the joke?"

        O praise me not with your lips, dear one!
    Though your tender words I prize.
        But dearer by far is the soulful gaze
    Of your eyes, your beautiful eyes,
        Your tender, loving eyes.

        O chide me not with your lips, dear one!
    Though I cause your bosom sighs.
        You can make repentance deeper far
    By your sad, reproving eyes,
        Your sorrowful, troubled eyes.

        Words, at the best, are but hollow sounds;
    Above, in the beaming skies,
        The constant stars say never a word,
    But only smile with their eyes -
        Smile on with their lustrous eyes.

        Then breathe no vow with your lips, dear one;
    On the wingèd wind speech flies.
        But I read the truth of your no...

Spellbound by a sweet fantasy
At evenglow I stand
Beside an opaline strange sea
That rings a sunset land.

The rich lights fade out one by one,
And, like a peony
Drowning in wine, the crimson sun
Sinks down in that strange sea.

His wake across the ocean-floor
In a long glory lies,
Like a gold wave-way to the shore
Of some sea paradise.

My dream flies after him, and I
Am in another land;
The sun sets in another sky,
And we sit hand in hand.

Gray eyes look into mine; such eyes
I think the angel’s are,
Soft as the soft light in the skies
When shines the morning star,

And tremulous as morn, when thin
Gold lights begin to glow,
Revealing the bright soul within
As dawn the sun below.

So, hand...

If I should wish hereafter that your heart
Should beat with one fair memory of me,
May Time's hard hand our footsteps guide apart,
But lead yours back one spring-time to the Lea.
Nodding Anemones,
Wind-flowers pale,
Bloom with the budding trees,
Dancing to every breeze,
Mock hopes more fair than these,
Love's vows more frail.

For then the grass we loved grows green again,
And April showers make April woods more fair;
But no sun dries the sad salt tears of pain,
Or brings back summer lights on faded hair,
Nodding Anemones,
Wind-flowers pale,
Bloom with the budding trees,
Dancing to every breeze,
Mock hopes more frail than these,
Love's vows more frail.

Il figliuol di Latona avea già nove.

THE GRIEF OF PHOEBUS AT THE LOSS OF HIS LOVE.


    Nine times already had Latona's son
Look'd from the highest balcony of heaven
For her, who whilom waked his sighs in vain,
And sighs as vain now wakes in other breasts;
Then seeking wearily, nor knowing where
She dwelt, or far or near, and why delay'd,
He show'd himself to us as one, insane
For grief, who cannot find some loved lost thing:
And thus, for clouds of sorrow held aloof,
Saw not the fair face turn, which, if I live,
In many a page shall praised and honour'd be,
The misery of her loss so changed her mien
That her bright eyes were dimm'd, for once, with tears,
Thereon its former gloom the air resumed.

MACGREGOR.

    Turn back, my Soul, no longer set
        Thy peace upon the years to come
    Turn back, the land of thy regret
        Holds nothing doubtful, nothing dumb.

    There are the voices, there the scenes
        That make thy life in living truth
    A tale of heroes and of queens,
        Fairer than all the hopes of youth.

The sea swings owre the slants of sand,
All white with winds that drive;
The sea swirls up to the still dim strand,
Where nae man comes alive.
At the grey soft edge of the fruitless surf
A light flame sinks and springs;
At the grey soft rim of the flowerless turf
A low flame leaps and clings.
What light is this on a sunless shore,
What gleam on a starless sea?
Was it earth's or hell's waste womb that bore
Such births as should not be?
As lithe snakes turning, as bright stars burning,
They bicker and beckon and call;
As wild waves churning, as wild winds yearning,
They flicker and climb and fall.
A soft strange cry from the landward rings,
"What ails the sea to shine?"
A keen sweet note from the spray's rim springs,
"What fires are these of thine...

I envy seas whereon he rides,
I envy spokes of wheels
Of chariots that him convey,
I envy speechless hills

That gaze upon his journey;
How easy all can see
What is forbidden utterly
As heaven, unto me!

I envy nests of sparrows
That dot his distant eaves,
The wealthy fly upon his pane,
The happy, happy leaves

That just abroad his window
Have summer's leave to be,
The earrings of Pizarro
Could not obtain for me.

I envy light that wakes him,
And bells that boldly ring
To tell him it is noon abroad, --
Myself his noon could bring,

Yet interdict my blossom
And abrogate my bee,
Lest noon in everlasting night
Drop Gabriel and me.

    Blue walls were grottoes,
    subterranean panels
    for covert messages, the
    occasional mot juste
    squirrelled up thru paint & memory.

    Something like guitar strings dangling
    only you employed
    tear sheets from Rolling Stone
    (counter-culture fly paper
    to catch the runny masses).

    The blue walls existed as
    firing ranges, gunpowder
    plots for ideas scribbled
    on pencil waves
    like the movement
    of snakes (or commandoes
    on their bellies) thru
    desert sand.

    Blue walls. Blue grottoes.
    Blue moods to temper finger oases
    (tap-tap of skeletal tree on your window pane)
    crawling thick with pregnant fruition
    with the bayonet lull of words.
...

Forget not the field where they perished,
    The truest, the last of the brave,
All gone--and the bright hope we cherished
    Gone with them, and quenched in their grave!

Oh! could we from death but recover
    Those hearts as they bounded before,
In the face of high heaven to fight over
    That combat for freedom once more;--

Could the chain for an instant be riven
    Which Tyranny flung round us then,
No, 'tis not in Man, nor in Heaven,
    To let Tyranny bind it again!

But 'tis past--and, tho' blazoned in story
    The name of our Victor may be,
Accurst is the march of that glory
    Which treads o'er the hearts of the free.

Far dearer the grave or the prison,
    Illumed by one patriot name,
Than the trophies of all, w...

    What hues the sunlight had, how rich the shadows were,
    The blue and tangled shadows dropped from the crusted branches
    Of the warped apple-trees upon the orchard grass.

    How heavenly pure the blue of two smooth eggs that lay
    Light on the rounded mud that lined the thrush's nest:
    And what a deep delight the spots that speckled them.

    And that small tinkling stream that ran from hedge to hedge,
    Shadowed over by the trees and glinting in the sunbeams,
    How clear the water was, how flat the beds of sand
    With travelling bubbles mirrored, each one a golden world
    To my enchanted eyes.    Then earth was new to me.

    But now I walk this earth as it were a lumber room,
    And sometimes live a week, seeing nothing but mere herbs,<...

Filled is Life's goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
    With solemn voice and slow.

No purple flowers,--no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between
    Thick leaves of mistletoe.

This goblet, wrought with curious art,
Is filled with waters, that upstart,
When the deep fountains of the heart,
By strong convulsions rent apart,
    Are running all to waste.

And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
    And give a bitter taste.

Above the lowly ...

AHASUERAS

What were thy thoughts, sweet Esther?    Something passed
Across thy face, that for a moment veiled
Thy soul from mine, and left me desolate.
Thy thoughts were not of me?

ESTHER

    Ay, ALL of thee!
I wondered, if in truth, thou wert content
With me - thy choice.    Was there no other one
Of all who passed before thee at thy court
Whose memory pursues thee with regret?

AHASUERAS

I do confess I much regret that day
And wish I could relive it.

ESTHER

    Oh!    My lord!

AHASUERAS

Yea!    I regret those hours I wasted on
The poor procession that preceded thee.
Hadst thou come first, then all the added wealth

    Of one long day of loving thee were mine -
A boundless for...

When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts,
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten
The dates which made me will be all forgotten;
And none will know the gleam there used to be
About the feast days freshly kept by me,
But men will call the golden hour of bliss
'About this time,' or 'shortly after this.'

Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb
Those glittering steps, those milestones upon time,
Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,
Those moments of the soul in years of earth.
They mark the height achieved, the main result,
The power of freedom in the perished cult,
The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds
Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.

By many waters and on ...

"He ought to be home," said the old man, "without there's something amiss.
He only went to the Two-mile, he ought to be back by this.
He would ride the Reckless filly, he would have his willful way;
And, here, he's not back at sundown, and what will his mother say?

"He was always his mother's idol, since ever his father died;
And there isn't a horse on the station that he isn't game to ride.
But that Reckless mare is vicious, and if once she gets away
He hasn't got strength to hold her, and what will his mother say?"

The old man walked to the sliprail, and peered up the dark'ning track,
And looked and longed for the rider that would never more come back;
And the mother came and clutched him, with sudden, spasmodic fright:
"What has become of my Willie? Why isn't he home to...