Betrayal

The night is dark, and evermore
    The thick drops patter on the pane
    The wind is weary of the rain,
And round the thatches moaneth sore;
    Dark is the night, and cold the air;
    And all the trees stand stark and bare,
With leaves spread dank and sere below,
    Slow rotting on the plashy clay,
    In the God's-acre far away,
Where she, O God! lies cold below--
        Cold, cold below!

And many a bitter day and night
    Have pour'd their storms upon her breast,
    And chill'd her in her long, long rest,
With foul corruption's icy blight;
    Earth's dews are freezing round the heart,
    Where love alone so late had part;
And evermore the frost and snow
    Are burrowing downward through the clay,
    In the God's-acre far away...

Not in the thick of the fight,
Not in the press of the odds,
Do the heroes come to their height,
Or we know the demi-gods.

That stands over till peace.
We can only perceive
Men returned from the seas,
Very grateful for leave.

They grant us sudden days
Snatched from their business of war;
But we are too close to appraise
What manner of men they are.

And, whether their names go down
With age-kept victories,
Or whether they battle and drown
Unreckoned, is hid from our eyes.

They are too near to be great,
But our children shall understand
When and how our fate
Was changed, and by whose hand.

Our children shall measure their worth.
We are content to be blind...
But we know that we walk on a new-born earth<...

Words from the mirror softly pass
To the curtains with a sigh:
"Why should I trouble again to glass
These smileless things hard by,
Since she I pleasured once, alas,
Is now no longer nigh!"

"I've imaged shadows of coursing cloud,
And of the plying limb
On the pensive pine when the air is loud
With its aerial hymn;
But never do they make me proud
To catch them within my rim!

"I flash back phantoms of the night
That sometimes flit by me,
I echo roses red and white -
The loveliest blooms that be -
But now I never hold to sight
So sweet a flower as she."

Sweet type of innocence, snow-clothed blossom,
Seemly, though vainly, bowing down to shun
The storm hard-beating on thy wan white bosom,
Left in the swail, and little cheer'd by sun;
Resembling that frail jewel, just begun
To ope on vice's eye its witcheries blooming,
Midst all its storms, with little room to shun--
Ah, thou art winter's snowdrop, lovely Woman!
In this world dropt, where every evil's glooming
With killing tempests o'er its tender prey,
Watching the opening of thy beauties coming,
Its every infant charm to snatch away:
Then come the sorrows thou'rt too weak to brave,
And then thy beauty-cheek digs ruin's early grave.

Oh! we are a lone, lost nation,
    We, who sing your songs.
With his moods, and his desolation
    The poet nowhere belongs.

We are not of the people
    Who labour, believe, and doubt.
Like the bell that rings in the steeple,
    We are in the world, yet out.

In the rustic town, or the city
    We seek our place in vain;
And our hearts are starved for pity,
    And our souls are sick with pain.

Yes, the people are buying, selling,
    And the world is one great mart.
And woe for the thoughts that are dwelling
    Up in the poet's heart.

We know what the waves are saying
    As they roll up from the sea,
And the weird old wind is playing
    Our own sad melody.

We send forth a song to wander
    Like a sp...

"Phoebe! Phoebe! Where is the chit?
When I want her most she's out of the way.
Child, you're running a long account
Up, to be squared on Judgment-day.

"Where have you been? and what have you there?"
"To the pasture for buttercups wet with dew."
"My patience! I think you are out of your wits;
I wonder what good will buttercups do?

"There's pennyroyal you might have got,-
It might have been useful to you or me,
But I never heard, in all my life,
Of buttercup cordial or buttercup tea.

"I want you to stay and mind the bread,
I've just put two loaves in the oven to bake;
When they are clone take them carefully out,
And put in their place this loaf of cake,

"While I run over to Widow Brown's;
Her son, from the mines, has just got back.

SOPH. AJ. 645.


All strangest things the multitudinous years
Bring forth, and shadow from us all we know.
Falter alike great oath and steeled resolve;
And none shall say of aught, 'This may not be.'
Lo! I myself, but yesterday so strong,
As new-dipt steel am weak and all unsexed
By yonder woman: yea I mourn for them,
Widow and orphan, left amid their foes.
But I will journey seaward - where the shore
Lies meadow-fringed - so haply wash away
My sin, and flee that wrath that weighs me down.
And, lighting somewhere on an untrodden way,
I will bury this my lance, this hateful thing,
Deep in some earth-hole where no eye shall see -
Night and Hell keep it in the underworld!
For never to this day, since first I grasped
The gift that Hector gave, my bi...

“ Ceste insigne fable et tragicque comedie.”
- RABELAIS.

I.

The sun was down, and twilight grey
Filled half the air; but in the room,
Whose curtain had been drawn all day,
The twilight was a dusky gloom:
Which seemed at first as still as death,
And void; but was indeed all rife
With subtle thrills, the pulse and breath
Of multitudinous lower life.



II.

In their abrupt and headlong way
Bewildered flies for light had dashed
Against the curtain all the day,
And now slept wintrily abashed;
And nimble mice slept, wearied out
With such a double night’s uproar;
But solid beetles crawled about
The chilly hearth and naked floor.



III.

And so throughout the twilight hour
That ...

As a forlorn soul waiting by the Styx
    Dimly expectant of lands yet more dim,
Might peer afraid where shadows change and mix
    Till the dark ferryman shall come for him.

And past all hope a long ray in his sight,
    Fall'n trickling down the steep crag Hades-black
Reveals an upward path to life and light,
    Nor any let but he should mount that track.

As with the sudden shock of joy amazed,
    He might a motionless sweet moment stand,
So doth that mortal lover, silent, dazed,
    For hope had died and loss was near at hand.

'Wilt thou?' his quest. Unready but for 'Nay,'
He stands at fault for joy, she whispering 'Ay.'

Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song,
Bending the banner-poles.

While, all alone,
Watching the loophole's spark,
Lie I, with life all dark,
Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd
Fast to the stone,
The grim walls, square letter'd
With prison'd men's groan.

Still strain the banner-poles
Through the wind's song,
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong.

A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks:
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
And instantly a dog is seen,
Glancing through that covert green.

The Dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in hollow or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
What is the creature doing here?

It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps, till June, December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivat...

Yet, even here, tho' Fiction rules the hour,
There shine some genuine smiles, beyond her power;
And there are tears, too--tears that Memory sheds
Even o'er the feast that mimic fancy spreads,
When her heart misses one lamented guest,[1]
Whose eye so long threw light o'er all the rest!
There, there, indeed, the Muse forgets her task,
And drooping weeps behind Thalia's mask.

Forgive this gloom--forgive this joyless strain,
Too sad to welcome pleasure's smiling train.
But, meeting thus, our hearts will part the lighter,
As mist at dawn but makes the setting brighter;
Gay Epilogue will shine where Prologue fails--
As glow-worms keep their splendor for their tails.

I know not why--but time, methinks, hath past
More fleet than usual since we parted...

This shred of song you bid me bring
Is snatched from fancy's embers;
Ah, when the lips forget to sing,
The faithful heart remembers!

Too swift the wings of envious Time
To wait for dallying phrases,
Or woven strands of labored rhyme
To thread their cunning mazes.

A word, a sigh, and lo, how plain
Its magic breath discloses
Our life's long vista through a lane
Of threescore summers' roses!

One language years alone can teach
Its roots are young affections
That feel their way to simplest speech
Through silent recollections.

That tongue is ours. How few the words
We need to know a brother!
As simple are the notes of birds,
Yet well they know each other.

This freezing month of ice and snow
That brings our lives...

Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery
But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.

You flung your taunt across the wave
We bore it as became us,
Well knowing that the fettered slave
Left friendly lips no option save
To pity or to blame us.

You scoffed our plea. “Mere lack of will,
Not lack of power,” you told us
We showed our free-state records; still
You mocked, confounding good and ill,
Slave-haters and slaveholders.

We struck at Slavery; to the verge
Of power and means we checked it;
Lo!—presto, change! its claims you urge,
Send greetings to it o’er the surge,
And comfort and protect it.

But yesterday you scarce could shake,
In slave-abhorring rigor,
Our Northern palms for conscience’ sake
To-day you clasp the hands that ache
With “walloping the nigger!”*

O Englishmen!—in hope and creed,
In...

I followed my Duke ere I was a lover,
To take from England fief and fee;
But now this game is the other way over,
But now England hath taken me!

I had my horse, my shield and banner,
And a boy's heart, so whole and free;
But now I sing in another manner,
But now England hath taken me!

As for my Father in his tower,
Asking news of my ship at sea,
He will remember his own hour,
Tell him England hath taken me!

As for my Mother in her bower,
That rules my Father so cunningly,
She will remember a maiden's power,
Tell her England hath taken me!

As for my Brother in Rouen City,
A nimble and naughty' page is he,
But he will come to suffer and pity,
Tell him England hath taken me!

As for my little Sister waiting
In...

We are much bound to them that do succeed;
    But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound
To such as fail. They all our loss expound;
They comfort us for work that will not speed,
And life - itself a failure.
        Ay, his deed,
Sweetest in story, who the dusk profound
    Of Hades flooded with entrancing sound,
Music's own tears, was failure. Doth it read
    Therefore the worse? Ah, no! so much, to dare,
    He fronts the regnant Darkness on its throne. -
So much to do; impetuous even there,
    He pours out love's disconsolate sweet moan -
He wins; but few for that his deed recall:
Its power is in the look which costs him all.

In a flowered dell the Lady Venus stood,
Amazed with sorrow. Down the morning one
Far golden horn in the gold of trees and sun
Rang out; and held; and died. . . . She thought the wood
Grew quieter. Wing, and leaf, and pool of light
Forgot to dance. Dumb lay the unfalling stream;
Life one eternal instant rose in dream
Clear out of time, poised on a golden height. . . .

Till a swift terror broke the abrupt hour.
The gold waves purled amidst the green above her;
And a bird sang. With one sharp-taken breath,
By sunlit branches and unshaken flower,
The immortal limbs flashed to the human lover,
And the immortal eyes to look on death.