Betrayal

Nay, more than violets
These thoughts of thine, friend!
Rather thy reedy brook--
Taw's tributary--
At midnight murmuring,
Descried them, the delicate
Dark-eyed goddesses,
There by his cressy bed
Dissolved and dreaming
Dreams that distilled into dew
All the purple of night,
All the shine of a planet.

Whereat he whispered;
And they arising--

Of day's forget-me-nots
The duskier sisters--
Descended, relinquished
The orchard, the trout-pool,
Torridge and Tamar,
The Druid circles,
Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,
Granite and sandstone;
By Roughtor, Dozmare,
Down the vale of the Fowey
Moving in silence,
Brushing the nightshade
By bridges cyclopean,
By Trevenna, Treverbyn,
Lawharne and Largin,
By Glyn...

You have shut me out from your tears and grief
Over the man laid low and hoary.
Listen to me now: I am no thief!
You have shut me out from your tears and grief,
Listen to me, I will tell my story.

The love of a man is transitory.
What do you know of his past? the years
He gave to another his manhood's glory?
The love of a man is transitory.
Listen to me now: open your ears.

Over the dead have done with tears!
Over the man who loved to madness
Me the woman you met with sneers,
Over the dead have done with tears!
Me the woman so sunk in badness.

He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
There by the dead now tell her so;
There by the dead where she bows in sadness.
He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
Mine the gladness and hers ...

Hence, my epistle--skim the Deep--fly o'er
Yon smooth expanse to the Teutonic shore!
Haste--lest a friend should grieve for thy delay--
And the Gods grant that nothing thwart thy way!
I will myself invoke the King[2] who binds
In his Sicanian ecchoing vault the winds,
With Doris[3] and her Nymphs, and all the throng
Of azure Gods, to speed thee safe along.
But rather, to insure thy happier haste,
Ascend Medea's chariot,[4] if thou may'st,    
Or that whence young Triptolemus[5] of yore
Descended welcome on the Scythian shore.
The sands that line the German coast descried,
To opulent Hamburg turn aside,
So call'd, if legendary fame be true,
From Hama,[6] whom a club-arm'd Cimbrian slew.
There lives, deep-le...

And must we part, because some say
Loud is our love, and loose our play,
And more than well becomes the day?
Alas for pity! and for us
Most innocent, and injured thus!
Had we kept close, or played within,
Suspicion now had been the sin,
And shame had followed long ere this,
T' have plagued what now unpunished is.
But we, as fearless of the sun,
As faultless, will not wish undone
What now is done, since where no sin
Unbolts the door, no shame comes in.
Then, comely and most fragrant maid,
Be you more wary than afraid
Of these reports, because you see
The fairest most suspected be.
The common forms have no one eye
Or ear of burning jealousy
To follow them: but chiefly where
Love makes the cheek and chin a sphere
To dance and play ...

Heart-sick of his journey was the Wanderer;
    Footsore and parched was he;
And a Witch who long had lurked by the wayside,
    Looked out of sorcery.

"Lift up your eyes, you lonely Wanderer,"
    She peeped from her casement small;
"Here's shelter and quiet to give you rest, young man,
    And apples for thirst withal."

And he looked up out of his sad reverie,
    And saw all the woods in green,
With birds that flitted feathered in the dappling,
    The jewel-bright leaves between.

And he lifted up his face towards her lattice,
    And there, alluring-wise,
Slanting through the silence of the long past,
    Dwelt the still green Witch's eyes.

And vaguely from the hiding-place of memory
    Voices seemed to cry;
"What is the ...

    Why wilt thou chide,
Who hast attained to be denied?
    Oh learn, above
All price is my refusal, Love.
    My sacred Nay
Was never cheapened by the way.
Thy single sorrow crowns thee lord
Of an unpurchasable word.

    Oh strong, Oh pure!
As Yea makes happier loves secure,
    I vow thee this
Unique rejection of a kiss.
    I guard for thee
This jealous sad monopoly.
I seal this honour thine. None dare
Hope for a part in thy despair.

The days have slain the days,
and the seasons have gone by
And brought me the summer again;
and here on the grass I lie
As erst I lay and was glad
ere I meddled with right and with wrong.
Wide lies the mead as of old,
and the river is creeping along
By the side of the elm-clad bank
that turns its weedy stream;
And grey o'er its hither lip
the quivering rushes gleam.
There is work in the mead as of old;
they are eager at winning the hay,
While every sun sets bright
and begets a fairer day.
The forks shine white in the sun
round the yellow red-wheeled wain,
Where the mountain of hay grows fast;
and now from out of the lane
Comes the ox-team drawing another,
comes the bailiff and the beer,
And thump, thump, goes the farmer's nag

Swings the way still by hollow and hill,
And all the world's a song;
"She's far," it sings me, "but fair," it rings me,
"Quiet," it laughs, "and strong!"

Oh! spite of the miles and years between us,
Spite of your chosen part,
I do remember; and I go
With laughter in my heart.

So above the little folk that know not,
Out of the white hill-town,
High up I clamber; and I remember;
And watch the day go down.

Gold is my heart, and the world's golden,
And one peak tipped with light;
And the air lies still about the hill
With the first fear of night;

Till mystery down the soundless valley
Thunders, and dark is here;
And the wind blows, and the light goes,
And the night is full of fear,

And I know, one night, on some fa...

We have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent, sport,
Beauty that we have won
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen walked with her boy,
Had given but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.

The old dead flowers of bygone summers,
The old sweet songs that are no more sung,
The rose-red dawns that were welcome comers
When you and I and the world were young,

Are lost, O love, to the light for ever,
And seen no more of the moon or sun,
For seas divide, and the seasons sever,
And twain are we that of old were one.

O fair lost love, when the ship went sailing
Across the seas in the years agone,
And seaward-set were the eyes unquailing,
And landward-looking the faces wan,

My heart went back as a dove goes homeward
With wings aweary to seek its nest,
While fierce sea-eagles are flying foamward
And storm-winds whiten the surge’s crest;

And far inland for a farewell pardon
Flew on and on, while the ship went South,
The ros...

Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,
Alcestis rises from the shades;
Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.

Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil
Hide all the peopled hills you see,
The gay, the proud, while lovers hail
These many summers you and me.

    I vaguely wondered what you were about,
    But never wrote when you had gone away;
    Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt
    You might need faces, or have things to say.
    Did I think of you last evening?    Dead you lay.
        O bitter words of conscience
        I hold the simple message,
    And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out:
        "It shall not be to-day;

    It is still yesterday; there is time yet!"
    Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun,
    But the sun moves.    Our onward course is set,
    The wake streams out, the engine pulses run
    Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun.
        It is all too late for turning,
        You are past all mortal signal,
    There will be time for nothing but reg...

"A red rose for my helmet,
And a word before we part!
The rose shall be my oriflamme
The word shall fill my heart."
Heart, Heart, Heart of my heart--
Just a look, just a word and a look!
A look or a sign that my love shall divine
And a word for my hungering heart!

She toyed with his love and her roses;
Was it mischief or mischance?--
She dropped him a rose--'twas a white one,
And he lifted it on his lance.
Heart, Heart, Heart of my heart!
Is it thus--is it thus we part?
With never a look, and never a sign,
Nor a word for my hungering heart!

She sought him among the dying,
She found him among the dead;
And the rose was still in his helmet.
But his life had stained it red.
Heart, Heart, Heart of my heart!
Now...