Betrayal

    Take a feller 'at's sick and laid up on the shelf,
        All shaky, and ga'nted, and pore -
    Jes all so knocked out he can't handle hisself
        With a stiff upper-lip any more;
    Shet him up all alone in the gloom of a room
        As dark as the tomb, and as grim,
    And then take and send him some roses in bloom,
        And you can have fun out o' him!

    You've ketched him 'fore now - when his liver was sound
        And his appetite notched like a saw -
    A-mockin' you, mayby, fer romancin' round
        With a big posy-bunch in yer paw;
    But you ketch him, say, when his health is away,
        And he's flat on his back in distress,
    And then you kin trot out yer little bokay
        And not be insulted, I guess!

Gulls in an aery morrice
Gleam and vanish and gleam . . .
The full sea, sleepily basking,
Dreams under skies of dream.

Gulls in an aery morrice
Circle and swoop and close . . .
Fuller and ever fuller
The rose of the morning blows.

Gulls in an aery morrice
Frolicking float and fade . . .
O the way of a bird in the sunshine,
The way of a man with a maid!

Who robbed the woods,
The trusting woods?
The unsuspecting trees
Brought out their burrs and mosses
His fantasy to please.
He scanned their trinkets, curious,
He grasped, he bore away.
What will the solemn hemlock,
What will the fir-tree say?

Surprised by joy, impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport O! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recall’d thee to my mind
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss? That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

I


Then first I knew, seeing that bent grey head,
How England honours all her thousand dead.
Then first I knew how faith through black grief burns,
Until the ruined heart glows while it yearns
For one that never more returns--
Glows in the spent embers of its pride
For one that careless lived and fearless died.
And then I knew, then first,
How everywhere Hope from her prison had burst--
On every hill, wide dale, soft valley's lap,
In lonely cottage clutch'd between huge downs,
And streets confused with streets in clanging towns--
Like spring from winter's jail pouring her sap
Into the idle wood of last year's trees.
Then first I knew how the vast world-disease
Would die away, and England upon her seas
Shake every scab of sickness; toward new sk...

“We shall soon lose a celebrated building.”
- Paris Newspaper.



I.

No, for I ’ll save it! Seven years since,
I passed through Paris, stopped a day
To see the baptism of your Prince;
Saw, made my bow, and went my way
Walking the heat and headache off,
I took the Seine-side, you surmise,
Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff,
Cavour’s appeal and Buol’s replies,
So sauntered till what met my eyes?

II.

Only the Doric little Morgue!
The dead-house where you show your drowned
Petrarch’s Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,
Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.
One pays one’s debt in such a case;
I plucked up heart and entered, stalked,
Keeping a tolerable face
Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked

How happens it, my cruel miss,
You're always giving me the mitten?
You seem to have forgotten this:
That you no longer are a kitten!

A woman that has reached the years
Of that which people call discretion
Should put aside all childish fears
And see in courtship no transgression.

A mother's solace may be sweet,
But Hymen's tenderness is sweeter;
And though all virile love be meet,
You'll find the poet's love is metre.

High o'er the clouds a Sunbeam shone,
    And far down under him,
With a subtle grace that was all her own,
    The Mist gleamed, fair and dim.

He looked at her with his burning eyes
    And longed to fall at her feet;
Of all sweet things there under the skies,
    He thought her the thing most sweet.

He had wooed oft, as a Sunbeam may,
    Wave, and blossom, and flower;
But never before had he felt the sway
    Of a great love's mighty power.

Tall cloud-mountains and vast space-seas,
    Wind, and tempest, and fire -
What are obstacles such as these
    To a heart that is filled with desire?

Boldly he trod over cloud and star,
    Boldly he swam through space,
She caught the glow of his eyes afar
    And veiled her delic...

Wherefore drag me to yon glittering eddy,

With resistless might?
Was I, then, not truly blest already

In the silent night?

In my secret chamber refuge taking,

'Neath the moon's soft ray,
And her awful light around me breaking,

Musing there I lay.

And I dream'd of hours with joy o'erflowing,

Golden, truly blest,
While thine image so beloved was glowing

Deep within my breast.

Now to the card-table hast thou bound me,

'Midst the torches glare?
Whilst unhappy faces are around me,

Dost thou hold me there?

Spring-flow'rs are to me more rapture-giving,

Now conceal'd from view;
Where thou, angel, art, is Nature living,

Love and kindness too.

Eyes with your teares, blind if you bee,
Why haue these teares such eyes to see,
Poore eyes, if yours teares cannot moue,
My teares, eyes, then must mone my loue,
    Then eyes, since you haue lost your sight,
    Weepe still, and teares shall lend you light,
    Till both desolu'd, and both want might.
No, no, cleere eyes, you are not blind,
But in my teares discerne my mind:
Teares be the language which you speake,
Which my hart wanting, yet must breake;
    My tongue must cease to tell my wrongs,
    And make my sighs to get them tongs,
    Yet more then this to her belongs.

Weep, weep, weep and weep,
    For pauper, dolt, and slave!
Hark! from wasted moor and fen,
Feverous alley, stifling den,
Swells the wail of Saxon men -
    Work! or the grave!

Down, down, down and down,
    With idler, knave, and tyrant!
Why for sluggards cark and moil?
He that will not live by toil
Has no right on English soil!
    God's word's our warrant!

Up, up, up and up!
    Face your game and play it!
The night is past, behold the sun!
The idols fall, the lie is done!
The Judge is set, the doom begun!
    Who shall stay it?

On Torridge, May 1849.

What the moral? Who rides may read.
When the night is thick and the tracks are blind
A friend at a pinch is a friend, indeed,
But a fool to wait for the laggard behind.
Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

White hands cling to the tightened rein,
Slipping the spur from the booted heel,
Tenderest voices cry "Turn again!"
Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel,
High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

One may fall but he falls by himself,
Falls by himself with himself to blame.
One may attain and to him is pelf,
Loot of the city in Gold or Fame.
Plunder of earth shall be all his own
Who travels the fastest and travels alone.

Wherefore the more ye be hel...

There is a place (I know it well)
Where beech trees crowd into a gloom,
And where a twinkling woodland well
Flings from a rock a rippling plume,
And, like a Faun beneath a spell,
The silence breathes of beam and bloom.

And here it was I met with her,
The child I never hoped to see,
Who long had been heart's-comforter,
And soul's-companion unto me,
Telling me oft of myths that were,
And of far faerylands to-be.

She stood there smiling by the pool,
The cascade made below the rocks;
Innocent, naked, beautiful,
The frail gerardia in her locks,
A flower, elfin-sweet and cool,
Freckled as faery four-o -clocks.

Her eyes were rain-bright; and her hair
An amber gleam like that which tips
The golden leaves when Fall comes fair;

'Tis pretty to be in Ballinderry,
    'Tis pretty to be in Ballindoon,
But 'tis prettier far in County Kerry
    Coortin' under the bran' new moon,
                Aroon, Aroon!

'Twas there by the bosom of blue Killarney
    They came by the hundther' a-coortin' me;
Sure I was the one to give back their blarney,
    An' merry was I to be fancy-free.

But niver a step in the lot was lighter,
    An' divvle a boulder among the bhoys,
Than Phelim O'Shea, me dynamither,
    Me illigant arthist in clock-work toys.

'Twas all for love he would bring his figgers
    Of iminent statesmen, in toy machines,
An' hould me hand as he pulled the thriggers
    An' scattered the thraytors to smithereens.

An' to see the Queen in her Crystial Pallus

Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream
Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age;
Save when the wind sweeps by and sounds are caught
Ambiguous, neither wholly thine nor theirs.
Oh! there is life that breathes not; Powers there are
That touch each other to the quick in modes
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive,
No soul to dream of. What art Thou, from care
Cast off, abandoned by thy rugged Sire,
Nor by soft Peace adopted; though, in place
And in dimension, such that thou might'st seem
But a mere footstool to yon sovereign Lord,
Huge Cruachan, (a thing that meaner hills
Might crush, nor know that it had suffered harm;)
Yet he, not loth, in favour of thy claims
To reverence, suspends his own; submittin...

Ah! ken ye what I met the day
Out oure the Mountains
A coming down by craggi[e]s grey
An mossie fountains
A[h] goud hair'd Marie yeve I pray
Ane minute's guessing
For that I met upon the way
Is past expressing.
As I stood where a rocky brig
A torrent crosses
I spied upon a misty rig
A troup o' Horses
And as they trotted down the glen
I sped to meet them
To see if I might know the Men
To stop and greet them.
First Willie on his sleek mare came
At canting gallop
His long hair rustled like a flame
On board a shallop.
Then came his brother Rab and then
Young Peggy's Mither
And Peggy too adown the glen
They went togither
I saw her wrappit in her hood
Fra wind and raining
Her cheek was flush wi' timid blood
'Twi...

Some have won a wild delight,
By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
I'd hazard death to-morrow.

Could the battle-struggle earn
One kind glance from thine eye,
How this withering heart would burn,
The heady fight to try!

Welcome nights of broken sleep,
And days of carnage cold,
Could I deem that thou wouldst weep
To hear my perils told.

Tell me, if with wandering bands
I roam full far away,
Wilt thou to those distant lands
In spirit ever stray?

Wild, long, a trumpet sounds afar;
Bid me, bid me go
Where Seik and Briton meet in war,
On Indian Sutlej's flow.

Blood has dyed the Sutlej's waves
With scarlet stain, I know;
Indus' borders yawn with graves,
Yet, command me go!

With loitering step and quiet eye,
Beneath the low November sky,
I wandered in the woods, and found
A clearing, where the broken ground
Was scattered with black stumps and briers,
And the old wreck of forest fires.
It was a bleak and sandy spot,
And, all about, the vacant plot
Was peopled and inhabited
By scores of mulleins long since dead.
A silent and forsaken brood
In that mute opening of the wood,
So shrivelled and so thin they were,
So gray, so haggard, and austere,
Not plants at all they seemed to me,
But rather some spare company
Of hermit folk, who long ago,
Wandering in bodies to and fro,
Had chanced upon this lonely way,
And rested thus, till death one day
Surprised them at their compline prayer,
And left them standing lifele...