Betrayal

“And the birds of the air have nests.”

Belated swallow, whither flying?
The day is dead, the light is dying,
The night draws near:
Where is thy nest, slow put together,
Soft-lined with moss and downy feather,
For shelter-place in stress of weather
And darkness drear?

Past, past, above the lighted city,
Unknowing of my wondering pity,
Seaward she flies.
Alas, poor bird! what rude awaking
Has driven thee forth, when storms are breaking,
And frightened gulls the waves forsaking
With warning cries?

Alas, my soul! while leaves are greenest
Thy heedless head thou fondly screenest
Beneath thy wing.
How bravely thou thy plumage wearest,
How lightly thou life’s burthen bearest,
How happily thy home preparest,
In careles...

The room is quiet, thoughts alone
People its mute tranquillity;
The yoke put off, the long task done,
I am, as it is bliss to be,
Still and untroubled. Now, I see,
For the first time, how soft the day
O'er waveless water, stirless tree,
Silent and sunny, wings its way.
Now, as I watch that distant hill,
So faint, so blue, so far removed,
Sweet dreams of home my heart may fill,
That home where I am known and loved:
It lies beyond; yon azure brow
Parts me from all Earth holds for me;
And, morn and eve, my yearnings flow
Thitherward tending, changelessly.
My happiest hours, aye! all the time,
I love to keep in memory,
Lapsed among moors, ere life's first prime
Decayed to dark anxiety.

Sometimes, I think a narrow heart
Makes me thus ...

Like a bold, adventurous swain,
Just a year ago to-day,
I launched my bark on a radiant main,
And Hymen led the way:
"Breakers ahead!" he cried,
As he sought to overwhelm
My daring craft in the shrieking tide,
But Love, like a pilot bold and tried,
Sat, watchful, at the helm.

And we passed the treacherous shoals,
Where many a hope lay dead,
And splendid wrecks were piled, like the ghouls
Of joys forever fled.
Once safely over these,
We sped by a fairy realm,
Across the bluest and calmest seas
That were ever kissed by a truant breeze,
With Love still at the helm.

We sailed by sweet, odorous isles,
Where the flowers and trees were one;
Through lakes that vied with the golden smiles
Of heaven's unclouded sun:
Still speeds...

Farewell to the feast-day! the pray'r book is stained
With tears; of the booth scarce a trace has remained;
The lime branch is withered, the osiers are dying,
And pale as a corpse the fair palm-frond is lying;
The boughs of grey willow are trodden and broken--
Friend, these are your hopes and your longings unspoken!

Lo, there lie your dreamings all dimm'd and rejected,
And there lie the joys were so surely expected!
And there is the happiness blighted and perished,
And all that aforetime your soul knew and cherished,
The loved and the longed for, the striven for vainly--
Your whole life before you lies pictured how plainly!

The branches are sapless, the leaves will decay,
An end is upon us, and whence, who shall say?
The broom of the beadle outside now has h...

Over the moonless land of Bathrolaire
Rises at night, when revelry begins,
A white unreal orb, a sun that spins,
A sun that watches with a sullen stare
That dance spasmodic they are dancing there,
Whilst drone and cry and drone of violins
Hint at the sweetness of forgotten sins,
Or call the devotees of shame to prayer.
And all the spaces of the midnight town
Ring with appeal and sorrowful abuse.
There some most lonely are: some try to crown
Mad lovers with sad boughs of formal yews,
And Titan women wandering up and down
Lead on the pale fanatics of the muse.

1.
How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

2.
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

3.
To thy fair feet a win...

Where the lone creek, chafing nightly in the cold and sad moonshine,
Beats beneath the twisted fern-roots and the drenched and dripping vine;
Where the gum trees, ringed and ragged, from the mazy margins rise,
Staring out against the heavens with their languid gaping eyes;
There I listened there I heard it! Oh, that melancholy sound,
Wandering like a ghostly whisper, through the dreaming darkness round!
Wandering, like a fearful warning, where the withered twilight broke
Through a mass of mournful tresses, drooping down the Native Oak.

And I caught a glimpse of sunset fading from a far-off wild,
As I sat me down to fancy, like a thoughtful, wistful child
Sat me down to fancy what might mean those hollow, hopeless tones,
Sooming round the swooning silence, dying out in smothered ...

    Old Aleck, the weaver, sat in the nook
Of his chimney, reading an ancient book,
Old, and yellow, and sadly worn,
With covers faded, and soiled, and torn; -
And the tallow candle would flicker and flare
As the wind, which tumbled the old man's hair,
Swept drearily in through a broken pane,
Damp and chilling with sleet and rain.

    Yet still, unheeding the changeful light,
Old Aleck read on and on that night;
Sometimes lifting his eyes, as he read,
To the cob-webb'd rafters overhead; -
But at length he laid the book away,
And knelt by his broken stool to pray;
And something, I fancied, the old man said
About "treasures in Heaven" of which he'd read.

    A wealthy merchant over the way
Sat in his lamp-light's steady ray,
Where ma...

Oh, I wadna be a yeoman, mither, to follow my father's trade,
To bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade.
Stinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord, -
Let them die o' rent wha like, mither, and I'll die by sword.

Nor I wadna be a clerk, mither, to bide aye ben,
Scrabbling ower the sheets o' parchment with a weary weary pen;
Looking through the lang stane windows at a narrow strip o' sky,
Like a laverock in a withy cage, until I pine away and die.

Nor I wadna be a merchant, mither, in his lang furred gown,
Trailing strings o' footsore horses through the noisy dusty town;
Louting low to knights and ladies, fumbling o'er his wares,
Telling lies, and scraping siller, heaping cares on cares.

Nor I wadna be a soldier, mither, to dice...

Ere the morn the East has crimsoned,
When the stars are twinkling there,
(As they did in Watts's Hymns, and
Made him wonder what they were:)
When the forest-nymphs are beading
Fern and flower with silvery dew -
My infallible proceeding
Is to wake, and think of you.

When the hunter's ringing bugle
Sounds farewell to field and copse,
And I sit before my frugal
Meal of gravy-soup and chops:
When (as Gray remarks) "the moping
Owl doth to the moon complain,"
And the hour suggests eloping -
Fly my thoughts to you again.

May my dreams be granted never?
Must I aye endure affliction
Rarely realised, if ever,
In our wildest works of fiction?
Madly Romeo loved his Juliet;
Copperfield began to pine
When he hadn't been to school ye...

In those dark mornings, deep in June,
    When brooding birds stir in the nest,
And heavy dews slip down the leaves,
    And drop into the rose's breast,
I woke and looked into the east,
    And saw no sign of coming day,
The pale cold morning rolled in mist,
    Slept on the hill-tops far away.

My window looked into the dawn,
    The slumbering dawn that was so nigh,
The shadow of the hills was drawn
    In waving lines against the sky.
But warmer hues began to tip
    The edges of the mountain cloud
And morning's rosy cheek and lip
    Glowed softly through her snow-pale shroud.

I turned and gazed into the west,
    The river murmured in my ear
'Gone night, and silence, dreams and rest,
    Another day of toil is here.'

...

The cuckoo and the coo-dove's ceaseless calling,
    Calling,
Of a meaningless monotony is palling
All my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered wood.
May-blossom and blue bird's-eye flowers falling,
    Falling
In a litter through the elm-tree shade are scrawling
Messages of true-love down the dust of the high- road.
I do not like to hear the gentle grieving,
    Grieving
Of the she-dove in the blossom, still believing
Love will yet again return to her and make all good.

When I know that there must ever be deceiving,
    Deceiving
Of the mournful constant heart, that while she's weaving
Her woes, her lover woos and sings within another wood.

Oh, boisterous the cuckoo shouts, forestalling,
    Stalling
A progress down the intricate...

So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!
And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls
A lute lies broken and a flower falls;
Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold.
Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told,
In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls
Beauty decays; and on their pedestals
Dreams crumble and th' immortal gods are mold.
Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,
One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost
Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past -
The voice of Memory, that stills to stone
The soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost,
Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.

I am afraid to think about my death,
When it shall be, and whether in great pain
I shall rise up and fight the air for breath
Or calmly wait the bursting of my brain.

I am no coward who could seek in fear
A folklore solace or sweet Indian tales:
I know dead men are deaf and cannot hear
The singing of a thousand nightingales.

I know dead men are blind and cannot see
The friend that shuts in horror their big eyes,
And they are witless--O I'd rather be
A living mouse than dead as a man dies.

Poems are painted window-panes:
Look from the square into the church--
Gloom and dusk are all your gains!
Sir Philistine is left in the lurch:
Outside he stands--spies nothing or use of it,
And nought is left him save the abuse of it.

But you, I pray you, just step in;
Make in the chapel your obeisance:
All at once 'tis a radiant pleasaunce:
Device and story flash to presence;
A gracious splendour works to win.
This to God's children is full measure:
It edifies and gives them pleasure.

Air - "My lodging is on the cold ground."


I.

    My Chloris, mark how green the groves,
        The primrose banks how fair:
    The balmy gales awake the flowers,
        And wave thy flaxen hair.

II.

    The lav'rock shuns the palace gay,
        And o'er the cottage sings;
    For nature smiles as sweet, I ween,
        To shepherds as to kings

III.

    Let minstrels sweep the skilfu' string
        In lordly lighted ha':
    The shepherd stops his simple reed,
        Blythe, in the birken shaw.

IV.

    The princely revel may survey
        Our rustic dance wi' scorn;
    But are their hearts as light as ours,
        Beneath the milk-white thorn?

V.

    ...

THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH

It was the season, when through all the land
    The merle and mavis build, and building sing
Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand,
    Whom Saxon Caedmon calls the Blitheheart King;
When on the boughs the purple buds expand,
    The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,
And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap,
And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.

The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,
    Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;
The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud
    Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;
And hungry crows assembled in a crowd,
    Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,
Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said:
"Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bre...

I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!

I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime
Of manhood who deal gently with me here;
Amid the happy people of my time
Who work their love's fulfilment, I appear

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;
Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint
The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,

My old dexterities of hue quite gone,
And nothing left for Love to look upon.

1866.