Betrayal

I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky,
And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover,
And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry.

And in them all was only the old cry,
That song they always sing, "The best is over!
You may remember now, and think, and sigh,
O silly lover!"
And I was tired and sick that all was over,
And because I,
For all my thinking, never could recover
One moment of the good hours that were over.
And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die.

Then from the sad west turning wearily,
I saw the pines against the white north sky,
Very beautiful, and still, and bending over
Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky.
And there was peace in them; and I
Was happy, and forgot to play the lover,
And laughed, and d...

I.
Friends of faces unknown and a land
Unvisited over the sea,
Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in the hand
Held up to be looked at by me,

II.
While you ask me to ponder and say
What a father and mother can do,
With the bright fellow-locks put away
Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay
Where the violets press nearer than you.

III.
Shall I speak like a poet, or run
Into weak woman's tears for relief?
Oh, children! I never lost one,
Yet my arm 's round my own little son,
And Love knows the secret of Grief.

IV.
And I feel what it must be and is,
When God draws a new angel so
Through the house of a man up to His,
With a murmur of music, you miss,
And a rapture of light, you forgo.
<...

I touched the heart that loved me as a player
    Touches a lyre; content with my poor skill
    No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still
I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air
Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?).
    Oh, he alone, alone could so fulfil
    My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.
He is gone, and silence takes me unaware.

The songs I knew not he resumes, set free
From my constraining love, alas for me!
    His part in our tune goes with him; my part
Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute
    As one with full strong music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute.

Air--The Wheelwright.


I.

Oh! weep those days, the penal days,
When Ireland hopelessly complained.
Oh! weep those days, the penal days,
When godless persecution reigned;
When year by year,
For serf and peer,
Fresh cruelties were made by law,
And filled with hate,
Our senate sate
To weld anew each fetter's flaw.
Oh! weep those days, those penal days--
Their memory still on Ireland weighs.


II.

They bribed the flock, they bribed the son,
To sell the priest and rob the sire;
Their dogs were taught alike to run
Upon the scent of wolf and friar.
Among the poor,
Or on the moor,
Were hid the pious and the true--
While traitor knave,
And recreant slave,
Had riches, rank, and retinue;

Letter IV. Yearnings.


I.

    The earth is glad, I know, when night is spent,
    For then she wakes the birdlings in the bowers;
    And, one by one, the rosy-footed hours
    Start for the race; and from his crimson tent
    The soldier-sun looks o'er the firmament;
    And all his path is strewn with festal flowers.


II.

    But what his mission? What the happy quest
    Of all this toil? He journeys on his way
    As Cæsar did, unbiass'd by the sway
    Of maid or man. His goal is in the west.
    Will he unbuckle there, a...

Fly from the world, O Bessy! to me,
    Thou wilt never find any sincerer;
I'll give up the world, O Bessy! for thee,
    I can never meet any that's dearer.
Then tell me no more, with a tear and a sigh,
    That our loves will be censured by many;
All, all have their follies, and who will deny
    That ours is the sweetest of any?

When your lip has met mine, in communion so sweet,
    Have we felt as if virtue forbid it?--
Have we felt as if heaven denied them to meet?--
    No, rather 'twas heaven that did it.
So innocent, love, is the joy we then sip,
    So little of wrong is there in it,
That I wish all my errors were lodged on your lip,
    And I'd kiss them away in a minute.

Then come to your lover, oh! fly to his shed,
    From a world...

I.

With plumes to which the dewdrops cling,
Wide waves the morn her golden wing;
With countless variegated beams
The empurpled orient glows and gleams;
A gorgeous mass of crimson clouds
The mountain's soaring summit shrouds;
Along the wave the blue mist creeps,
    The towering forest trees are stirred
By the low wind that o'er them sweeps,
    And with the matin song of bird,
    The hum of early bee is heard,
Hailing with his shrill, tiny horn,
The coming of the bright-eyed morn;
And, with the day-beam's earliest dawn,
    Her couch the fair Mazelli quits,
And gaily, fleetly as a fawn,
    Along the wildwood paths she flits,
Hieing from leafy bower to bower,
Culling from each its bud and flower,
Of brightest hue and sweetest breath,...

Ten years! and to my waking eye
Once more the roofs of Berne appear;
The rocky banks, the terrace high,
The stream, and do I linger here?

The clouds are on the Oberland,
The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;
But bright are those green fields at hand,
And through those fields comes down the Aar,

And from the blue twin lakes it comes,
Flows by the town, the church-yard fair,
And ’neath the garden-walk it hums,
The house and is my Marguerite there?

Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush
Of startled pleasure floods thy brow,
Quick through the oleanders brush,
And clap thy hands, and cry: ’Tis thou!

Or hast thou long since wander’d back,
Daughter of France! to France, thy home;
And flitted down the flowery track
Where feet like ...

Fades the great pyramid, the blank walls fade!
And thou, immortal boy, dost walk with me
Along that grove from out whose deeper shade
The nightingale sings living ecstasy.

And where thy burial-stone so long is set
With plaintive lines that tell a day's despair,
Lo, now that urn with happy figures fret
Which cannot fail, but go eternal fair!

Yet, suddenly, the wind of death is blown
On all earth 's beauty, even at its prime;
The red rose drops, the hand of Joy is flown,
And thou, oh, thou art dust this long, long time!

XI. Love's Ambition.


    I must invoke thee for my spirit's good,
    And prove myself un-guilty of the crime
    Of mere self-seeking, though with this imbued.
    I sing as sings the mavis in a wood,
    Content to be alive at harvest time.
    Had I its wings I should not be withstood!
    But I will weave my fancies into rhyme,
    And greet afar the heights I cannot climb.
    I will invoke thee, Love! though far away,
    And pay thee homage, as becomes a knight
    Who longs to keep his true-love in his sight.
    Yea, I will soar to thee, i...

Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven,
To whom alone it has been given
To change and be adored for ever,
Envy not this dim world, for never
But once within its shadow grew
One fair as -

NOTE: - The tale is told a few years after the massacre of Glencoe, by a wandering bard, who had formerly been piper to MacDonald of Glencoe, but had escaped the fate of his kinsmen.

I tell a tale of woful tragedy,
Resulting from that fearful infamy;
That unsurpassed, unrivalled treachery,
That merciless, that beastlike butchery.

Upon the evening calm and bright,
That followed on the fatal night,
Just as the sun was setting red
Behind Benmore's sequestered head,
And weeping tears of yellow light,
That, streaming down, bedimmed his sight,
As he prepared to make his grave
Beneath the deep Atlantic wave;
I stood and viewed with starting tears
The silent scene of glorious years,
And thought me on my former pride,
As when I marched my chief beside,

OH, my Theresa dear!
Thine eyes, I greatly fear,

Can through the bandage see!
Although thine eyes are bound,
By thee I'm quickly found,

And wherefore shouldst thou catch but me?

Ere long thou held'st me fast,
With arms around me cast,

Upon thy breast I fell;
Scarce was thy bandage gone,
When all my joy was flown,

Thou coldly didst the blind repel.

He groped on ev'ry side,
His limbs he sorely tried,

While scoffs arose all round;
If thou no love wilt give,
In sadness I shall live,

As if mine eyes remain'd still bound.

Red gleams the mountain ridge,
    Slow the stream creeps
Under the old bent bridge,
    And labor sleeps.

There are no restless birds,
    No leaves that stir,
Dusk her gray mantle girds,
    Night's harbinger.

The storm-soul's change and start
    Pause, lull, and cease;
In my unquiet heart
    Is born a peace.

A garden here—May breath and bloom of spring—
The cuckoo yonder from an English elm
Crying ‘with my false egg I overwhelm
The native nest:’ and fancy hears the ring
Of harness, and that deathful arrow sing,
And Saxon battleaxe clang on Norman helm.
Here rose the dragon-banner of our realm:
Here fought, here fell, our Norman-slander’d king.
O Garden blossoming out of English blood!
O strange hate-healer Time! We stroll and stare
Where might made right eight hundred years ago;
Might, right? ay good, so all things make for good-
But he and he, if soul be soul, are where
Each stands full face with all he did below.

Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and day was past.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
Out in the porch's sagging floor,
leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.

In summer's mellow midnight,
A cloudless moon shone through
Our open parlour window,
And rose-trees wet with dew.

I sat in silent musing;
The soft wind waved my hair;
It told me heaven was glorious,
And sleeping earth was fair.

I needed not its breathing
To bring such thoughts to me;
But still it whispered lowly,
'How dark the woods would be!

'The thick leaves in my murmur
Are rustling like a dream,
And all their myriad voices
Instinct with spirit seem.'

I said, 'Go, gentle singer,
Thy wooing voice is kind:
But do not think its music
Has power to reach my mind.

'Play with the scented flower,
The young tree's supply bough,
And leave my human feelings
In their own course to flow.'

The wa...

How many times have we been interrupted
Just as I was about to make up a story for you!
One time it was because we suddenly saw a firefly
Lighting his green lantern among the boughs of a fir-tree.
Marvellous! Marvellous! He is making for himself
A little tent of light in the darkness!
And one time it was because we saw a lilac lightning flash
Run wrinkling into the blue top of the mountain,
We heard boulders of thunder rolling down upon us
And the plat-plat of drops on the window,
And we ran to watch the rain
Charging in wavering clouds across the long grass of the field!
Or at other times it was because we saw a star
Slipping easily out of the sky and falling, far off,
Among pine-dark hills;
Or because we found a crimson eft
Darting in the cold grass!
Th...