Betrayal

At moonset when ghost speaks with ghost,
And spirits meet where once they sinned,
Between the bournes of found and lost,
My soul met her soul on the wind,
My late-lost Evalind.

I kissed her mouth. Her face was wild.
Two burning shadows were her eyes,
Wherefrom the maiden love, that smiled
A heartbreak smile of severed ties,
Gazed with a wan surprise.

Then suddenly I seemed to see
No more her shape where beauty bloomed ...
My own sad self gazed up at me
My sorrow, that had so assumed
The form of her entombed.

Heart-sick of his journey was the Wanderer;
Footsore and sad 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 darkness of one brief life-time
To ...

“Me too, perchance, in future days,
The sculptured stone shall show,
With Paphian myrtle or with bays
Parnassian on my brow.


“But I, or ere that season come,
Escaped from every care,
Shall reach my refuge in the tomb,
And sleep securely there.”


So sang, in Roman tone and style,
The youthful bard, ere long
Ordain’d to grace his native isle
With her sublimest song.


Who then but must conceive disdain,
Hearing the deed unblest
Of wretches who have dared profane
His dread sepulchral rest?


Ill fare the hands that heaved the stones
Where Milton’s ashes lay,
That trembled not to grasp his bones
And steal his dust away!


O ill requited bard! neglect
Thy living worth repaid,
And bli...

My dear, my dear, I know
More than another
What makes your heart beat so;
Not even your own mother
Can know it as I know,
Who broke my heart for her
When the wild thought,
That she denies
And has forgot,
Set all her blood astir
And glittered in her eyes.

Around me the images of thirty years:
An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;
Kevin O'Higgins' countenance that wears
A gentle questioning look that cannot hide
A soul incapable of remorse or rest;
A revolutionary soldier kneeling to be blessed;
An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
Blessing the Tricolour. "This is not,' I say,
"The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland
The poets have imagined, terrible and gay.'
Before a woman's portrait suddenly I stand,
Beautiful and gentle in her Venetian way.
I met her all but fifty years ago
For twenty minutes in some studio.

III
Heart-smitten with emotion I Sink down,
My heart recovering with covered eye...

But two miles more, and then we rest!
Well, there is still an hour of day,
And long the brightness of the West
Will light us on our devious way;
Sit then, awhile, here in this wood,
So total is the solitude,
We safely may delay.

These massive roots afford a seat,
Which seems for weary travellers made.
There rest. The air is soft and sweet
In this sequestered forest glade,
And there are scents of flowers around,
The evening dew draws from the ground;
How soothingly they spread!

Yes; I was tired, but not at heart;
No, that beats full of sweet content,
For now I have my natural part
Of action with adventure blent;
Cast forth on the wide world with thee,
And all my once waste energy
To weighty purpose bent.

Yet, sayst tho...

        Let them bury your big eyes
        In the secret earth securely,
        Your thin fingers, and your fair,
        Soft, indefinite-colored hair,--
        All of these in some way, surely,
        From the secret earth shall rise;
        Not for these I sit and stare,
        Broken and bereft completely;
        Your young flesh that sat so neatly
        On your little bones will sweetly
        Blossom in the air.

        But your voice,--never the rushing
        Of a river underground,
        Not the rising of the wind
        In the trees before the rain,
        Not the woodcock's watery call,
        Not the note the white-throat utters,
        Not the feet of children pushing
        Yellow leaves along the gutters
  ...

Indeed, my Phaedra, if to find
That wealth can female wishes gain
Had e'er disturb'd your thoughtful mind,
Or cost one serious moment's pain,
I should have said that all the rules,
You learn'd of moralists and schools,
Were very useless, very vain.

Yet I perhaps mistake the case,
Say, though with this heroic air,
Like one that holds a nobler chace,
You try the tender loss to bear,
Does not your heart renounce your tongue?
Seems not my censure strangely wrong
To count it such a slight affair?
When Hesper gilds the shaded sky,
Oft as you seek the well-known grove,
Methinks I see you cast your eye
Back to the morning scenes of love:
Each pleasing word you heard her say,
Her gentle look, her graceful way,
Again your struggling fancy move....

(Art and Poetry [The Germ, No. 3], March 1850)


She sat alway thro' the long day
Spinning the weary thread away;
And ever said in undertone:
'Come, that I be no more alone.'

From early dawn to set of sun
Working, her task was still undone;
And the long thread seemed to increase
Even while she spun and did not cease.
She heard the gentle turtle-dove
Tell to its mate a tale of love;
She saw the glancing swallows fly,
Ever a social company;
She knew each bird upon its nest
Had cheering songs to bring it rest;
None lived alone save only she; -
The wheel went round more wearily;
She wept and said in undertone:
'Come, that I be no more alone.'

Day followed day, and still she sighed
For love, and was not satisf...

To his heart it struck such terror
That he laughed a laugh of scorn, -
The man in the soldier's doublet,
With the sword so bravely worn.

It struck his heart like the frost-wind
To find his comrades fled,
While the battle-field was guarded
By the heroes who lay dead.

He drew his sword in the sunlight,
And called with a long halloo:
"Dead men, there is one living
Shall stay it out with you!"

He raised a ragged standard,
This lonely soul in war,
And called the foe to onset,
With shouts they heard afar.

They galloped swiftly toward him.
The banner floated wide;
It sank; he sank beside it
Upon his sword, and died.

She had a tall man's height or more;
Her face from summer's noontide heat
No bonnet shaded, but she wore
A mantle, to her very feet
Descending with a graceful flow,
And on her head a cap as white as new-fallen snow.

Her skin was of Egyptian brown:
Haughty, as if her eye had seen
Its own light to a distance thrown,
She towered, fit person for a Queen
To lead those ancient Amazonian files;
Or ruling Bandit's wife among the Grecian isles.

Advancing, forth she stretched her hand
And begged an alms with doleful plea
That ceased not; on our English land
Such woes, I knew, could never be;
And yet a boon I gave her, for the creature
Was beautiful to see, a weed of glorious feature.

I left her, and pursued my way;
And soon before me did...

By the side of a rock on the hill, beneath
the aged trees, old Oscian
sat on the moss; the last of the race of
Fingal. Sightless are his aged eyes;
his beard is waving in the wind. Dull
through the leafless trees he heard the
voice of the north. Sorrow revived in
his soul: he began and lamented the
dead.

How hast thou fallen like an oak,
with all thy branches round thee! Where
is Fingal the King? where is Oscur my
son? where are all my race? Alas! in
the earth they lie. I feel their tombs
with my hands. I hear the river below
murmuring hoarsely over the stones.
What dost thou, O river, to me? Thou
bringest back the memory of the past.

The race of Fingal stood on thy
banks, like a wood in a fertile soil.
Keen were their spears of...

    Her lou'd I most,
    By thee that 's lost,
Though she were wonne with leasure;
    She was my gaine,
    But to my paine,
Thou spoyl'st me of my Treasure.

    The Ship full fraught
    With Gold, farre sought,
Though ne'r so wisely helmed,
    May suffer wracke
    In sayling backe,
By Tempest ouer-whelmed.

    But shee, good Sir,
    Did not preferre
You, for that I was ranging;
    But for that shee
    Found faith in mee,
And she lou'd to be changing.

    Therefore boast not
    Your happy Lot,
Be silent now you haue her;
    The time I knew
    She slighted you,
When I was in her fauour.

    None stands so fast,
    But may be cast
By Fortune, and disgraced:
    Once did I ...

Let us go far from here!
Here there is sadness in the early year:
Here sorrow waits where joy went laughing late:
The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hate
Above the woodland and the meadowland;
And Spring hath taken fire in her hand
Of frost and made a dead bloom of her face,
Which was a flower of marvel once and grace,
And sweet serenity and stainless glow.
Delay not. Let us go.

Let us go far away
Into the sunrise of a fairer May:
Where all the nights resign them to the moon,
And drug their souls with odor and soft tune,
And tell their dreams in starlight: where the hours
Teach immortality with fadeless flowers;
And all the day the bee weights down the bloom,
And all the night the moth shakes strange perfume,
Like music, from the flower-bel...

Lance, shield, and sword relinquished, at his side
A bead-roll, in his hand a clasped book,
Or staff more harmless than a shepherd's crook,
The war-worn Chieftain quits the world to hide
His thin autumnal locks where Monks abide
In cloistered privacy. But not to dwell
In soft repose he comes: within his cell,
Round the decaying trunk of human pride,
At morn, and eve, and midnight's silent hour,
Do penitential cogitations cling;
Like ivy, round some ancient elm, they twine
In grisly folds and strictures serpentine;
Yet, while they strangle, a fair growth they bring,
For recompense, their own perennial bower.

Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles with listlessness -
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

A thought too strange to house within my brain
Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
- That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain . . .

It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer
That shapes its lawless figure on the main,
And each new impulse tends to make outflee
The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;
Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be
Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

1866.

High on a point of rugged ground
Among the wastes of Rylstone Fell
Above the loftiest ridge or mound
Where foresters or shepherds dwell,
An edifice of warlike frame
Stands single Norton Tower its name
It fronts all quarters, and looks round
O'er path and road, and plain and dell,
Dark moor, and gleam of pool and stream,
Upon a prospect without bound.
The summit of this bold ascent
Though bleak and bare, and seldom free
As Pendle-hill or Pennygent
From wind, or frost, or vapours wet
Had often heard the sound of glee
When there the youthful Nortons met,
To practise games and archery:
How proud and happy they! the crowd
Of Lookers-on how pleased and proud!
And from the scorching noon-tide sun,
From showers, or when the prize was won,
They...

For mocking on men's faces
He only sees instead
The hidden, hundred traces
Of tears their eyes have shed.

Above their lips denying,
Through all their boasting dares,
He hears the anguished crying
Of old unanswered prayers.

And through the will's reliance
He only sees aright
A frightened child's defiance
Left lonely in the night.