Betrayal

Take out the blossom in your hair abloom,
    No more it seemeth beautiful, or bright,
And sickening is its subtly sweet perfume -
    He will not come to-night.

Take off the necklace with its sparkling gem,
    And rings that glow and glitter in the light,
And fling them in the case that waits for them -
    He will not come to-night.

Take off the robe a little while ago
    You chose, to make you fairer in his sight;
'Tis ten o'clock.    So late you can but know
    He will not come to-night.

He will not come.    God grant you strength and grace,
    For never more upon your mortal sight
Shall dawn a glimpse of that beloved face
    That did not come to-night.

He will not come.    And through the shadowed years,
    The perfume o...

I.

What precious thing are you making fast
In all these silken lines?
And where and to whom will it go at last?
Such subtle knots and twines!

I am tying up all my love in this,
With all its hopes and fears,
With all its anguish and all its bliss,
And its hours as heavy as years.

I am going to send it afar, afar,
To I know not where above;
To that sphere beyond the highest star
Where dwells the soul of my Love.

But in vain, in vain, would I make it fast
With countless subtle twines;
For ever its fire breaks out at last,
And shrivels all the lines.



II.

If you have a carrier-dove
That can fly over land and sea;
And a message for your Love,
“Lady, I love but thee!”

And this dove wi...

Ah, Koelue!
Had you embalmed your beauty, so
It could not backward go,
Or change in any way,
What were the use, if on my eyes
The embalming spices were not laid
To keep us fixed,
Two amorous sculptures passioned endlessly?
What were the use, if my sight grew,
And its far branches were cloud-hung,
You small at the roots, like grass,
While the new lips my spirit would kiss
Were not red lips of flesh,
But the huge kiss of power?
Where yesterday soft hair through my fingers fell,
A shaggy mane would entwine,
And no slim form work fire to my thighs,
But human Life's inarticulate mass
Throb the pulse of a thing
Whose mountain flanks awry
Beg my mastery - mine!
Ah! I will ride the dizzy beast of the world
My road - my way!

Winter in the world it is,
Round about the unhoped kiss
Whose dream I long have sorrowed o'er;
Round about the longing sore,
That the touch of thee shall turn
Into joy too deep to burn.

Round thine eyes and round thy mouth
Passeth no murmur of the south,
When my lips a little while
Leave thy quivering tender smile,
As we twain, hand holding hand,
Once again together stand.

Sweet is that, as all is sweet;
For the white drift shalt thou meet,
Kind and cold-cheeked and mine own,
Wrapped about with deep-furred gown
In the broad-wheeled chariot:
Then the north shall spare us not;
The wide-reaching waste of snow
Wilder, lonelier yet shall grow
As the reddened sun falls down.

But the warders of the town,
When they flash...

"Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?"

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

"Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?"

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

"Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?"

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

"Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
...

He only sees both sides of that dark vail
That hangs before men's eyes--
He only. It is well!
Hope ever stands unseen
Behind the screen,
For knowledge would bring Hope to sudden death,
And cloud the present with the coming ill.
I would lie still, Dear Lord,
I would lie still,
And stay my troubled heart on Thee,
Obedient to Thy will.

No,I'll endure ten thousand deaths
Ere any further I'll comply:
Oh! Sir, no man on earth that breathes
Had ever yet his hand so high.

Oh! take your sword and pierce my heart,
Undaunted see me meet the wound
Oh! will you act a Tarquin's part?
A second Lucrece you have found.

Thus to the pressing Corydon
Poor Florimel, unhappy maid,
Fearing by love to be undone,
In broken dying accents said;

Delia who held the conscious door,
Inspired by truth and brandy, smiled,
Knowing that sixteen months before
Our Lucrece had her second child.

And hark ye, Madam, cried the bawd,
None of your flights, your high-rope dodging;
Be civil here, or march abroad;
Oblige the 'squire, or quit the lodging.

Oh! have I, Florimel went on,<...

So much time has passed
& time is a hooligan run wild
littering the streets,
squeezing toothpaste at the wrong end
shredding clothes with a razor blade.

Time is never called into account    -
lives like Peter Pan
in a flying abode above it all
scot-free, the surly bandit.

A perilous acquisition    -
tiny pinpricks above the eye-brows
crows' feet
-    all too visible rending of
fleshy corners bulbed
to puffiness.

Red-handed,
I caught time
his knife in Youth once more
still-water decay,
brackish trouble-maker
with tint of rouge and gray.

This school-yard tough
still picking on the corner weakling.
braggadocio and upstart
spoiling for a fight
first elbow up,
each foot in a fray.

If chance some pensive stranger, hither led,
His bosom glowing from majestic views,
Temple and tower 'mid the bright landscape's hues,
Should ask who sleeps beneath this lowly bed?
A maid of sorrow. To the cloistered scene,
Unknown and beautiful a mourner came,
Seeking with unseen tears to quench the flame
Of hapless love: yet was her look serene
As the pale moonlight in the midnight aisle;
Her voice was gentle and a charm could lend,
Like that which spoke of a departed friend;
And a meek sadness sat upon her smile!
Now, far removed from every earthly ill,
Her woes are buried, and her heart is still.

The old inventive Poets, had they seen,
Or rather felt, the entrancement that detains
Thy waters, Duddon! 'mid these flowery plains
The still repose, the liquid lapse serene,
Transferred to bowers imperishably green,
Had beautified Elysium! But these chains
Will soon be broken; a rough course remains,
Rough as the past; where Thou, of placid mien,
Innocuous as a firstling of the flock,
And countenanced like a soft cerulean sky,
Shalt change thy temper; and, with many a shock
Given and received in mutual jeopardy,
Dance, like a Bacchanal, from rock to rock,
Tossing her frantic thyrsus wide and high!

There blooms a flower in Trebizond
Stored with such honey for the bee,
(So saith the antique book I conned)
Of such alluring fragrancy,
Not sweeter smells the Eden-tree;
Thither the maddened feasters fly,
Yet - so alas! is it with me -
To taste that honey is to die.

Belovèd, I, as foolish fond,
Feast still my eyes and heart on thee,
Asking no blessedness beyond
Thy face from morn till night to see,
Ensorcelled past all remedy;
Even as those foolish bees am I,
Though well I know my destiny -
To taste that honey is to die.

O'er such a doom shall I despond?
I would not from thy snare go free,
Release me not from thy sweet bond,
I live but in thy mystery;
Though all my senses from me flee,
I still would glut my glazing eye,

For a while the salt brine leaves me
O'er my terraced rocks to fall,
And my broad swift-gliding waters
Olden memories recall.

Ere the tallest pines were seedlings
With my life-stream these were blent;
As a father's words, like arrows
Straight to children's hearts are sent,

So my currents speeding downwards,
Ever passing, sing the same
Story of the days remembered,
When the stranger people came.

Men of mighty limbs and voices,
Bearing shining shields and knives,
Painted gleamed their hair like evening,
When the sun in ocean dives.

Blue their eyes and tall their stature,
Huge as Indian shadows seen
When the sun through mists of morning
Casts them o'er a clear lake's sheen.

From before the great Pale-faces
Fl...

When Sorrow (vsing mine owne fiers might)
Melts downe his lead into my boyling brest
Through that darke furnace to my hart opprest,
There shines a ioy from thee my only light:
But soone as thought of thee breeds my delight,
And my yong soule flutters to thee his nest,
Most rude Despaire, my daily vnbidden guest,
Clips streight my wings, streight wraps me in his night,
And makes me then bow downe my heade, and say,
Ah, what doth Phoebus gold that wretch auaile
Whom Iron doores doe keepe from vse of day?
So strangely (alas) thy works on me preuaile,
That in my woes for thee thou art my ioy,
And in my ioyes for thee my onely annoy.

If Thou who seest this heart of mine
    To earthly idols prone,
Should'st all those clinging cords untwine,
    And take again Thy own,--
Help me to lay my hands in thine,
    And say Thy will be done!

But Oh, when Thou dost claim the gift
    Which Thou did'st only lend,
And leav'st my life of love bereft,
    And lonely to the end,--
Oh Saviour! be Thyself but left,
    My best beloved Friend!

And still the chastening hand I bless,
    Which doth my steps uphold
Along earth's thorny wilderness,
    Back to the Father's fold,
Where I Thy face in righteousness
    Shall evermore behold.

Long time his pulse hath ceased to beat
But benefits, his gift, we trace,
Expressed in every eye we meet
Round this dear Vale, his native place.

To stately Hall and Cottage rude
Flowed from his life what still they hold,
Light pleasures, every day, renewed;
And blessings half a century old.

Oh true of heart, of spirit gay,
Thy faults, where not already gone
From memory, prolong their stay
For charity's sweet sake alone.

Such solace find we for our loss;
And what beyond this thought we crave
Comes in the promise from the Cross,
Shining upon thy happy grave.

"All ready?" cried the captain;
"Ay, ay!" the seamen said;
"Heave up the worthless lubbers,
The dying and the dead."
Up from the slave-ship's prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust
"Now let the sharks look to it,
Toss up the dead ones first!"
Corpse after corpse came.up,
Death had been busy there;
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces
Of fetter-link and whip.
Gloomily stood the captain,
With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.
"Are all the dead dogs over?"
Growled through that matted lip;
"The blind ones are no better,
Let's lighten the good ship."
Hark! from the shi...

‘From that sky livid, bizarre
as your tortured destiny,
what thoughts fill your empty heart,
Freethinker, answer me.’

Insatiable and avid
for vague and obscure skies,
I’ll not groan like Ovid,
banned from Rome and paradise.

Skies, shores split and seamed,
my pride’s mirrored in you:
your clouds in mourning, too,

are the hearses of my dreams,
Hell’s reflected in your light,
where my heart takes delight.

Her heart is still and leaps no more
With holy passion when the breeze,
Her whilom playmate, as before,
Comes with the language of the bees,
Sad songs her mountain cedars sing,
And water-music murmuring.

Her calm white feet, - erst fleet and fast
As Daphne's when a god pursued, -
No more will dance like sunlight past
The gold-green vistas of the wood,
Where every quailing floweret
Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light,
And breasts of snow; as virginal
As mountain drifts; and throat as white
As foam of mountain waterfall;
And hyacinthine curls, that streamed
Like crag-born mists, and gloomed and gleamed.

Her presence breathed such scents as haunt
Moist, mountain dells and solitudes;
Aroma...