Betrayal

    Accursed Death, what neede was there at all
Of thee, or who to councell thee did call;
The subiect whereupon these lines I spend
For thee was most vnfit, her timelesse end
Too soone thou wroughtst, too neere her thou didst stand;
Thou shouldst haue lent thy leane and meager hand
To those who oft the help thereof beseech,
And can be cured by no other Leech.
    In this wide world how many thousands be,
That hauing past fourescore, doe call for thee.
The wretched debtor in the Iayle that lies,
Yet cannot this his Creditor suffice
Doth woe thee oft with many a sigh and teare,
Yet thou art coy, and him thou wilt not heare.
The Captiue slaue that tuggeth at the Oares,
And vnderneath the Bulls tough sinewes rores,
Begs at thy hand, in lieu of all his paines,

Not unto us who did but seek
The word that burned within to speak,
Not unto us this day belong
The triumph and exultant song.
Upon us fell in early youth
The burden of unwelcome truth,
And left us, weak and frail and few,
The censor's painful work to do.
Thenceforth our life a fight became,
The air we breathed was hot with blame;
For not with gauged and softened tone
We made the bondman's cause our own.
We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn,
The private hate, the public scorn;
Yet held through all the paths we trod
Our faith in man and trust in God.
We prayed and hoped; but still, with awe,
The coming of the sword we saw;
We heard the nearing steps of doom,
We saw the shade of things to come.
In grief which they alone can feel
Who from a ...

Come in the evening, or come in the morning;
Come when you ’re look’d for, or come without warning:
Kisses and welcome you ’ll find here before you,
And the oftener you come here the more I ’ll adore you!
Light is my heart since the day we were plighted;
Red is my cheek that they told me was blighted;
The green of the trees looks far greener than ever,
And the linnets are singing, “True lovers don’t sever!”

I ’ll pull you sweet flowers, to wear if you choose them,
Or, after you’ve kiss’d them, they ’ll lie on my bosom;
I ’ll fetch from the mountain its breeze to inspire you;
I ’ll fetch from my fancy a tale that won’t tire you.
Oh! your step’s like the rain to the summer-vex’d farmer,
Or sabre and shield to a knight without armor;
I ’ll sing you sweet songs till t...

Mother of Roman games and Greek delights,
Lesbos, where kisses languorous or glad,
As hot as suns, or watermelon-fresh,
Make festivals of days and glorious nights;
Mother of Roman games and Greek delights,

Lesbos, where love is like the wild cascades
That throw themselves into the deepest gulfs,
And twist and run with gurglings and with sobs,
Stormy and secret, swarming underground;
Lesbos, where love is like the wild cascades!

Lesbos, where Phrynes seek each other out,
Where no sigh ever went without response,
Lovely as Paphos· in the sight of stars,
Where Venus envies Sappho, with good cause!
Lesbos, where Phrynes seek each other out.

Lesbos, land of the warm and languid nights
That draw in mirrors sterile fantasies,
So girls with holl...

I

What will happen, Widow La Rue?
For last night at three o'clock
You woke and saw by your window again
Amid the shadowy locust grove
The phantom of the old soldier:
A shadow of blue, like mercury light -
What will happen, Widow La Rue?

        *        *        *        *        *

What may not happen
In this place of summer loneliness?
For neither the sunlight of July,
Nor the blue of the lake,
Nor the green boundaries of cool woodlands,
Nor the song of larks and thrushes,
Nor the bravuras of bobolinks,
Nor scents of hay new mown,
Nor the ox-blood sumach cones,
Nor the snow of nodding yarrow,
Nor clover blossoms on the dizzy crest
Of the bluff by the lake
Can take away the loneliness
Of this July by the lake!

But where's the brown drifter that went out alone?
    --Roll and go, and fare you well--
Was her name Peggy Nutten? That name is my own.
    Fare you well, my sailor.
They sang in the dark, "Let her go! Let her go!"
And she sailed to the West, where the broad waters flow;
And the others come back, but ... the bitter winds blow.
    Ah, fare you well, my sailor.

The women, at evening, they wave and they cheer.
    --Roll and go, and fare you well--
They're waiting to welcome their lads at the pier.
    Fare you well, my sailor.
They're all coming home in the twilight below;
But there's one little boat.... Let her go! Let her go!
She carried my heart, and a heart for the foe.
    Ah, fare you well, my sailor.

    Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
    To the siding-shed,
    And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

    Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
    As men's are, dead.

    Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
    Stood staring hard,
    Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
    Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
    Winked to the guard.

    So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
    They were not ours:
    We never heard to which front these were sent.

    Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
    Who gave them flowers.

    Shall they return to beatings of great bells
    In wild trainloads?
    A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
    May...

Come, Heraclitus and Simonides,
Come with your weeping and sad elegies:
Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the lands
Wherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:
Gather ye here within my house today
And help me mourn my sweet, whom in her May
Ungodly Death hath ta'en to his estate,
Leaving me on a sudden desolate.
'Tis so a serpent glides on some shy nest
And, of the tiny nightingales possessed,
Doth glut its throat, though, frenzied with her fear,
The mother bird doth beat and twitter near
And strike the monster, till it turns and gapes
To swallow her, and she but just escapes.
"'Tis vain to weep," my friends perchance will say.
Dear God, is aught in life not vain, then? Nay,
Seek to lie soft, yet thorns will prickly be:
The life of man is naught but...

Fast as the rolling seasons bring
The hour of fate to those we love,
Each pearl that leaves the broken string
Is set in Friendship's crown above.
As narrower grows the earthly chain,
The circle widens in the sky;
These are our treasures that remain,
But those are stars that beam on high.


We miss - oh, how we miss! - his face, -
With trembling accents speak his name.
Earth cannot fill his shadowed place
From all her rolls of pride and fame;
Our song has lost the silvery thread
That carolled through his jocund lips;
Our laugh is mute, our smile is fled,
And all our sunshine in eclipse.

And what and whence the wondrous charm
That kept his manhood boylike still, -
That life's hard censors could disarm
And lead them captive at his w...

        As specks appear on fields of snow,
        So blemishes on beauty show.

        A peacock fed in a farm-yard
        Where all the poultry eyed him hard -
        They looked on him with evil eye,
        And mocked his sumptuous pageantry:
        Proud of the glories he inherited,
        He sought the praises they well merited.
        Then, to surprise their dazzled sight,
        He spread his glories to the light.
        His glories spread, no sooner seen
        Than rose their malice and their spleen.

        "Behold his insolence and pride -
        His haughtiness!" the turkey cried.
        "He trusts in feathers; but within
        They serve to hide his negro skin."

        "What hideous legs!" exclaimed the goose;

The King was drinking in Malwood Hall,
There came in a monk before them all:
He thrust by squire, he thrust by knight,
Stood over against the dais aright;
And, 'The word of the Lord, thou cruel Red King,
The word of the Lord to thee I bring.
A grimly sweven I dreamt yestreen;
I saw thee lie under the hollins green,
And through thine heart an arrow keen;
And out of thy body a smoke did rise,
Which smirched the sunshine out of the skies:
So if thou God's anointed be
I rede thee unto thy soul thou see.
For mitre and pall thou hast y-sold,
False knight to Christ, for gain and gold;
And for this thy forest were digged down all,
Steading and hamlet and churches tall;
And Christes poor were ousten forth,
To beg their bread from south to north.
So tarry...

Oh, I am grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!
I set my throat against the air,
    I laugh at simple folk!

There's little kind and little fair
    Is worth its weight in smoke
To me, that's grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!

Lass, if to sleep you would repair
    As peaceful as you woke,
Best not besiege your lover there
    For just the words he spoke
To me, that's grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!

"And has the Sun his flaming chariot driven
Two hundred times around the ring of heaven,
Since Science first, with all her sacred train,
Beneath yon roof began her heavenly reign?
While thus I mused, methought, before mine eyes,
The Power of Education seemed to rise;
Not she whose rigid precepts trained the boy
Dead to the sense of every finer joy;
Nor that vile wretch who bade the tender age
Spurn Reason's law and humour Passion's rage;
But she who trains the generous British youth
In the bright paths of fair majestic Truth:
Emerging slow from Academus' grove
In heavenly majesty she seemed to move.
Stern was her forehead, but a smile serene
'Softened the terrors of her awful mien.'
Close at her side were all the powers, designed
To curb, exalt, reform th...

The night cold as nuggets, dark as acorn,
against your chest; snow falling
like abandoned echoes releasing energy
into the spyglass, umbrella moon.

A solitary figure trapping hapless sparrows
not in a net but with his footprints
doubling as dungeons against the sun    -
here & there rusting eavestroughs ballooning
into avenging shadows their harpsichord voices
spun on dreams Dick Whittington once used to buy a cat.

And once Tom Thumb Upstaged Peter Pan by appearing
under a petunia but this is not likely to happen soon.

The dawn, forlorn & grey, is a court muffin's handkerchief
waved at a sailor far out at sea.

Over there, above the jetty, stands the mansion of the Vardens,
With a tennis ground and terrace, and a flagstaff in the gardens:
They are gentlemen and ladies, they’ve been ‘toffs’ for generations,
But old Varden’s been unlucky, lost a lot in speculations.

Troubles gathered fast upon him when the mining bubble ‘busted,’
Then the bank suspended payment, where his little all he trusted;
And the butcher and the baker sent their bills in when they read it,
Even John, the Chow that served him, has refused to give him ‘cledit.’

And the daughters of the Vardens, they are beautiful as Graces,
But the balcony’s deserted, and they rarely show their faces;
And the swells of their acquaintance never seem to venture near them,
And the bailiff says they seldom have a cup of tea to chee...

    In bloom and bud the bees are busily
        Storing against the winter their sweet hoard
    That shall be rifled ere the autumn be
        Past, or the winter comes with silver sword
    To fright the bees, until the merry round
    Tells them that sweets again are to be found.

    The lusty tide is flowing by in ease,
        Telling of joy along its brimming way;
    Far in its waters is an isle of trees
        Whereto the sun will go at end of day,
    As who in secret place and dear is hid,
    And scarce can rouse him thence tho' he be chid.

    Now justice comes all trouble to repair,
        And cheeks that had been wan are coloured well,
    The untilled moor is comely, and the air
        Hath a great round of song from bird in dell,

[1]

The horses have not always been
The humble slaves of men.
When, in the far-off past,
The fare of gentlemen was mast,
And even hats were never felt,
Horse, ass, and mule in forests dwelt.
Nor saw one then, as in these ages,
So many saddles, housings, pillions;
Such splendid equipages,
With golden-lace postilions;
Such harnesses for cattle,
To be consumed in battle;
As one saw not so many feasts,
And people married by the priests.
The horse fell out, within that space,
With the antler'd stag, so fleetly made:
He could not catch him in a race,
And so he came to man for aid.
Man first his suppliant bitted;
Then, on his back well seated,
Gave chase with spear, and rested not
Till to the ground the foe he brought.

Occhi miei, oscurato è 'l nostro sole.

HE ENDEAVOURS TO FIND PEACE IN THE THOUGHT THAT SHE IS IN HEAVEN.


    Mine eyes! our glorious sun is veil'd in night,
Or set to us, to rise 'mid realms of love;
There we may hail it still, and haply prove
It mourn'd that we delay'd our heavenward flight.
Mine ears! the music of her tones delight
Those, who its harmony can best approve;
My feet! who in her track so joy'd to move.
Ye cannot penetrate her regions bright!
But wherefore should your wrath on me descend?
No spell of mine hath hush'd for ye the joy
Of seeing, hearing, feeling, she was near:
Go, war with Death--yet, rather let us bend
To Him who can create--who can destroy--
And bids the ready smile succeed the tear.

WOLLASTON.
...