Betrayal

                            TO SHAKESPEARE

                Longer than thine, than thine,
    Is now my time of life; and thus thy years
    Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine.
    O how ignoble this my clasp appears!

                Thy unprophetic birth,
    Thy darkling death: living I might have seen
    That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth.
    O first, O last, O infinite between!

                Now that my life has shared
    Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice,
    To what all-vain embrace shall be compared
    My lean enclosure of thy paradise?

                To ignorant arms that fold
    A poet to a foolish breast?    The Line,
    That is not, with the world within its hold?
    So, days with days,...

O giorno, o ora, o ultimo momento.

HE MOURNS HIS WANT OF PERCEPTION AT THAT MEETING.


    O Day, O hour, O moment sweetest, last,
O stars conspired to make me poor indeed!
O look too true, in which I seem'd to read.
At parting, that my happiness was past;
Now my full loss I know, I feel at last:
Then I believed (ah! weak and idle creed!)
'Twas but a part alone I lost; instead,
Was there a hope that flew not with the blast?
For, even then, it was in heaven ordain'd
That the sweet light of all my life should die:
'Twas written in her sadly-pensive eye!
But mine unconscious of the truth remain'd;
Or, what it would not see, to see refrain'd,
That I might sink in sudden misery!

MOREHEAD.


    Dark hour, last moment of t...

To Philip Bourke Marston


Love will not weep because the seal is broken
That sealed upon a life beloved and brief
Darkness, and let but song break through for token
How deep, too far for even thy song's relief,
Slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief.
Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter,
As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair;
As here but late, with smile more bright than laughter,
Thy sweet strange yearning eyes would seem to bear
Witness that joy might cleave the clouds of care.
Two days agone, and love was one with pity
When love gave thought wings toward the glimmering goal
Where, as a shrine lit in some darkling city,
Shone soft the shrouded image of thy soul:
And now thou art healed of life; thou art healed, and whol...

Jealous girls these sometimes were,
While they liv'd or lasted here:
Turn'd to flowers, still they be
Yellow, mark'd for jealousy.

Non pur quell' una bella ignuda mano.

HE RETURNS THE GLOVE, BEWAILING THE EFFECT OF HER BEAUTY.


    Not of one dear hand only I complain,
Which hides it, to my loss, again from view,
But its fair fellow and her soft arms too
Are prompt my meek and passive heart to pain.
Love spreads a thousand toils, nor one in vain,
Amid the many charms, bright, pure, and new,
That so her high and heavenly part endue,
No style can equal it, no mind attain.
That starry forehead and those tranquil eyes,
The fair angelic mouth, where pearl and rose
Contrast each other, whence rich music flows,
These fill the gazer with a fond surprise,
The fine head, the bright tresses which defied
The sun to match them in his noonday pride.

MACGREGOR.

    The night is mild and clear, and without wind,
    And o'er the roofs, and o'er the gardens round
    The moon shines soft, and from afar reveals
    Each mountain-peak serene. O lady, mine,
    Hushed now is every path, and few and dim
    The lamps that glimmer through the balconies.
    Thou sleepest! in thy quiet rooms, how light
    And easy is thy sleep! No care thy heart
    Consumes; and little dost thou know or think,
    How deep a wound thou in my heart hast made.
    Thou sleepest; I to yonder heaven turn,
    That seems to greet me with a loving smile,
    And to that Nature old, omnipotent,
    That doomed me still to suffer. "I to thee
    All hope deny," she said, "e'en hope; nor may
    Those eyes of thine e'er shine, save through their tears."...

There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where'er the gentle south wind blows;
Where, underneath the whitethorn, in the glade,
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast-ushering star of morning comes
O'er-riding the grey hills with golden scarf;
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandalled Eve,
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate,
Departs with silent pace!    That spirit moves
In the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter.
And frequent, on the everla...

A sky of wind! And while these fitful gusts
Are beating round the windows in the cold,
With sullen sobs of rain, behold I shape
A settler’s story of the wild old times:
One told by camp-fires when the station drays
Were housed and hidden, forty years ago;
While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes, and drew,
And crowded round the friendly gleaming flame
That lured the dingo, howling, from his caves,
And brought sharp sudden feet about the brakes.

A tale of Love and Death. And shall I say
A tale of love in death for all the patient eyes
That gathered darkness, watching for a son
And brother, never dreaming of the fate
The fearful fate he met alone, unknown,
Within the ruthless Australasian wastes?

For in a far-off, sultry summer, rimmed
With thun...

The nameless shadowy female rose from out the breast of Orc,
Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon;
And thus her voice arose:

'O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons?
To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found,
For I am faint with travail,
Like the dark cloud disburden'd in the day of dismal thunder.

My roots are brandish'd in the heavens, my fruits in earth beneath
Surge, foam and labour into life, first born and first consum'd!
Consumed and consuming!
Then why shouldst thou, accursed mother, bring me into life?

I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab'ring head,
And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs;
Yet the red sun and moon
And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains.

        I.

Where thronged poppies with globed shields
    Of fierce red
Warrior all the harvest fields
    Is my bed.
Here I tumble with the bee,
Robber bee of low degree
    Gay with dust:
Wit ye of a bracelet bold
Broadly belting him with gold?
It was I who bound it on
When a-gambol on the lawn -
    It can never rust.


        II.

Where the glow-worm lights his lamp
    There am I;
Where within the grasses damp
    Crickets cry.
Cheer'ly, cheer'ly in the burne
Where the lins the torrents churn
    Into foam,
Leap I on a whisp of broom, -
Cheer'ly, cheer'ly through the gloom, -
All aneath a round-cheeked moon,
Treading on her silver shoon
    Lightly o'er the gloam,


        ...

        Come! Why, halloa, that you, Jack?
            How's the world been using you?
        Want your pipe? it's in the jar
            Think I might be looking blue.
        Maud's been breaking off with me,
            Fact see here I've got the ring.
        That's the note she sent it in;
            Read it soothing sort of thing.
        Jack, you know I write sometimes
            Must have read some things of mine.
        Well, I thought I'd just send Maud
            Something for a valentine.
        So I ground some verses out
            In the softest kind of style,
        Full of love, and that, you know
            Bothered me an awful while;
        Quite a heavy piece of work.
            So when I had got them done
        Why,...

Ye children of the Land of Gold,
I sing a song to you,
And if the jokes are somewhat old,
The main idea is new.
So be it sung, by hut and tent,
Where tall the native grows;
And understand, the song is meant
For singing through the nose.

There dwelt a hard old cockatoo
On western hills far out,
Where everything is green and blue,
Except, of course, in drought;
A crimson Anarchist was he,
Held other men in scorn,
Yet preached that ev’ry man was free,
And also ‘ekal born.’

He lived in his ancestral hut,
His missus wasn’t there,
And there was no one with him but
His daughter, Mabel Clare.
Her eyes and hair were like the sun;
Her foot was like a mat;
Her cheeks a trifle overdone;
She was a democrat.

A manly ...

Our hearts are set on pleasure and on gain.
Fine clothes, fair houses, more and daintier bread;
We have no strivings, and no hunger-pain
For spiritual food; our souls are dead.
So judged I till the day when news was rife
Of fire besieging scholars and their dames,
And bravely one gave up her own fair life
In saving the most helpless from the flames.

Then when I heard the instantaneous cheer
That broke with sobbing undertones from all
The multitude, and watched them drawing near,
Stricken and mute, around her funeral pall
In grief and exultation, I confest
My judgment erred, - we know and love the best.

Sally is gone that was so kindly,
Sally is gone from Ha'nacker Hill
And the Briar grows ever since then so blindly;
And ever since then the clapper is still...
And the sweeps have fallen from Ha'nacker Mill.

Ha'nacker Hill is in Desolation:
Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.
And Spirits that call on a fallen nation,
Spirits that loved her calling aloud,
Spirits abroad in a windy cloud.

Spirits that call and no one answers
Ha'nacker's down and England's done.
Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers,
And never a ploughman under the Sun:
Never a ploughman. Never a one.

Let brutish hearts, as hard as stones,
Mock The weak Muse's tender moans,
As now she wails o'er Titty's bones
With anguish deep;
Doubtless o'er parent's dying groans
They'd little weep.

Ah, Pity! thine's a tender heart,
Thy sigh soon heaves, thy tears soon start;
And thou hast given the muse her part
Salt tears to shed,
To mourn and sigh with sorrow's smart;
For pussy's dead.

Ah, mourning Memory! 'neath thy pall
Thou utterest many a piercing call,
Pickling in vinegar's sour gall
Ways that are fled--
The way, the feats, the tricks, and all,
Of pussy dead.

Thou tell'st of all the gamesome plays
That mark'd her happy kitten-days:
-Ah, I did love her funny way
On the sand floor;
But now sad sorrow damps my lays:

If, yet regardful of your native land,
Old Shakespeare's tongue you deign to understand,
Lo, from the blissful bowers where heaven rewards
Instructive sages and unblemish'd bards,
I come, the ancient founder of the stage,
Intent to learn, in this discerning age,
What form of wit your fancies have imbrac'd,
And whither tends your elegance of taste,
That thus at length our homely toils you spurn,
That thus to foreign scenes you proudly turn,
That from my brow the laurel wreath you claim
To crown the rivals of your country's fame.

What, though the footsteps of my devious Muse
The measur'd walks of Grecian art refuse?
Or though the frankness of my hardy style
Mock the nice touches of the critic's file?
Yet, what my age and climate held to view,
Impartia...

So closed our tale, of which I give you all
The random scheme as wildly as it rose:
The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said,
'I wish she had not yielded!' then to me,
'What, if you drest it up poetically?'
So prayed the men, the women: I gave assent:
Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven
Together in one sheaf? What style could suit?
The men required that I should give throughout
The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque,
With which we bantered little Lilia first:
The women--and perhaps they felt their power,
For something in the ballads which they sang,
Or in their silent influence as they sat,
Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque,
And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close--
They hated banter, wi...

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.


The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her a...