Betrayal

I think that though the clouds be dark,
That though the waves dash o'er the bark,
Yet after while the light will come,
And in calm waters safe at home
The bark will anchor.
Weep not, my sad-eyed, gray-robed maid,
Because your fairest blossoms fade,
That sorrow still o'erruns your cup,
And even though you root them up,
The weeds grow ranker.

For after while your tears shall cease,
And sorrow shall give way to peace;
The flowers shall bloom, the weeds shall die,
And in that faith seen, by and by
Thy woes shall perish.
Smile at old Fortune's adverse tide,
Smile when the scoffers sneer and chide.
Oh, not for you the gems that pale,
And not for you the flowers that fail;
Let this thought cherish:

That after while the clouds will part...

"Drown'd! drown'd!" - Hamlet.


One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!

Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!

Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements;
Whilst the wave constantly
Drips from her clothing;
Take her up instantly,
Loving, not loathing. -

Touch her not scornfully;
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and humanly;
Not of the stains of her,
All that remains of her
Now is pure womanly.

Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny
Bash and undutiful:
Past all dishonor,
Death has left on her
Only the beautiful.

Still, for all slips of hers,
One of Eve's family -
Wipe...

I saw them sitting in the shade;
    The long green vines hung over,
But could not hide the gold-haired maid
    And Earl, my dark-eyed lover.
His arm was clasped so close, so close,
    Her eyes were softly lifted,
While his eyes drank the cheek of rose
    And breasts like snowflakes drifted.

A strange noise sounded in my brain;
    I was a guest unbidden.
I stole away, but came again
    With two knives snugly hidden.
I stood behind them.    Close they kissed,
    While eye to eye was speaking;
I aimed my steels, and neither missed
    The heart I sent it seeking.

There were two death-shrieks mingled so
    It seemed like one voice crying,
I laughed - it was such bliss, you know,
    To hear and see them dying.
I laughed and ...

Oh thou token loved of joys now perish'd

That I still wear from my neck suspended,
Art thou stronger than our spirit-bond so cherish'd?

Or canst thou prolong love's days untimely ended?

Lily, I fly from thee! I still am doom'd to range
Thro' countries strange,

Thro' distant vales and woods, link'd on to thee!
Ah, Lily's heart could surely never fall

So soon away from me!

As when a bird bath broken from his thrall,

And seeks the forest green,
Proof of imprisonment he bears behind him,
A morsel of the thread once used to bind him;

The free-born bird of old no more is seen,

For he another's prey bath been.

A beautiful flower, that bedeck'd a mean pasture,
In virgin perfection I found;
Its fair bloom stood naked to every disaster,
And deep the storm gather'd around:
The rose in the midst of its brambles is blooming,
Whose weapons intruders alarm,
But sweetest of blossoms, fond, fair, and weak woman
Has nothing to guard her from harm.

Each stranger seem'd struck with a blossom so lovely,
In such a lone valley that grew;
The clown's admiration was cast on it roughly
While blushing it shrank from his view:
O sweet was the eve when I found the fair blossom,
Sure never seem'd blossom so fair,
I instant transplanted its charms to my bosom,
And deep has the root gather'd there.

As on a waveless sea, a vessel strikes
Upon a treacherous rock;
Waking the sailors from their happy dreams
By the swift, terrible shock.

Dreaming of shaded village streets, and home,
Forgetting the cruel sea
Till the shock came - so woke I, yet I know
'Twas Love, I loved, not he.

'Tis not the star the wave so wildly clasps,
Only its form reflected in the stream;
'Tis not a broken heart I mourn,
Only a broken dream.

I should have died when he was brought so low,
Had it been him I loved,
Died clinging to him, as to the blasted oak
The ivy clings unmoved.

'Twas Love that looked on me with strange, sweet eyes
Burning with marvellous flame;
Love was the idol that I worshipped, though
I gave to it his name.

I gave to...

Censored lies that mimic truth...
        Censored truth as pale as fear...
My heart is like a rousing bell -
        And but the dead to hear...

My heart is like a mother bird,
        Circling ever higher,
And the nest-tree rimmed about
        By a forest fire...

My heart is like a lover foiled
        By a broken stair -
They are fighting to-night in Sackville Street,
        And I am not there!

'Tis night: in silence looking down,
The Moon, from cloudless ether, sees
A Camp, and a beleaguered Town,
And Castle, like a stately crown
On the steep rocks of winding Tees;
And southward far, with moor between,
Hill-top, and flood, and forest green,
The bright Moon sees that valley small
Where Rylstone's old sequestered Hall
A venerable image yields
Of quiet to the neighbouring fields;
While from one pillared chimney breathes
The smoke, and mounts in silver wreaths.
The courts are hushed; for timely sleep
The greyhounds to their kennel creep;
The peacock in the broad ash tree
Aloft is roosted for the night,
He who in proud prosperity
Of colours manifold and bright
Walked round, affronting the daylight;
And higher still, above the bower

It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs
The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.
The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,
Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;
In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stem
Her white showery petals; none regarded them;
The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm;
Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm.

Not a spark in the warren under the giant night,
Save where in a turret's lantern beamed a grave, still light:
There in the topmost chamber a gold-eyed lamp was lit -
Marvellous lamp in darkness, informing, redeeming it!
For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, the blessed and doomed,
Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men en-tombed;
And ...

If days should pass without a written word
    To tell me of thy welfare, and if days
    Should lengthen out to weeks, until the maze
Of questioning fears confused me, and I heard.
    Life-sounds as echoes; and one came and said
    After these weeks of waiting: "He is dead!"

Though the quick sword had found the vital part,
    And the life-blood must mingle with the tears,
    I think that, as the dying soldier hears
The cries of victory, and feels his heart
    Surge with his country's triumph-hour, I could
    Hope bravely on, and feel that God was good.

I could take up my thread of life again
    And weave my pattern though the colors were
    Faded forever. Though I might not dare
Dream often of thee, I should know that when
    Death came t...

By the walk of the willows I pour'd out my theme,
The breath of the evening scarce dimpled the stream;
By the waters I stood, like an image of Woe,
And my tears, like the tide, seem'd to tremble and flow.

Ye green scatter'd reeds, that half lean to the wave,
In your plaintive, your musical, sighs, could ye save
But one note of my charmer, to soften my doom,
I would stay till these willows should arch me a tomb!

For ye know, when I pour'd out my soul on the lute,
How she hung down her head, so expressively mute!
From my hand she would take it, still breathing my pain;
She would touch it - return it - and smile at the strain.

Ye wild blooming flow'rs, that enamel this brink,
Like me could ye feel, and like me could ye think,
How sadly would droop ev'ry b...

She that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers' touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.
Did she in touching that lone wing
Recall the years before her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
Her thought some popular enmity:
Blind and leader of the blind
Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?
When long ago I saw her ride
Under Ben Bulben to the meet,
The beauty of her country-side
With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,
She seemed to have grown clean and sweet
Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:
Sea-borne, or balanced on the air
When first it sprang out of the nest
Upon some lofty rock to stare
Upon the cloudy can...

Under her dark veil she wrung her hands.
"Why are you so pale today?"
"Because I made him drink of stinging grief
Until he got drunk on it.
How can I forget? He staggered out,
His mouth twisted in agony.
I ran down not touching the bannister

And caught up with him at the gate.
I cried: 'A joke!
That's all it was. If you leave, I'll die.'
He smiled calmly and grimly
And told me: 'Don't stand here in the wind.' "

"Come, sit thee by my side once more,
    'Tis long since thus we' met;
And though our dream of love is o'er,
    Its sweetness lingers yet.
Its transient day has long been past,
    Its flame has ceased to burn, -
But Memory holds its spirit fast,
    Safe in her sacred urn.

"I will not chide thy wanderings,
    Nor ask why thou couldst flee
A heart whose deep affection's springs
    Poured forth such love for thee!
We may not curb the restless mind,
    Nor teach the wayward heart
To love against its will, nor bind
    It with the chains of art.

"I would but tell thee how, in tears
    And bitterness, my soul
Has yearned with dreams, through long, long, years,
    Which it could not control.
And how the thought that clingeth t...

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods;

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘T is better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
    And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
    Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
    No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
    The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
    I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
    With one continuous sound--

A slumberous sound,--a sound that brings
    The feelings of a dream--
As of innumerable wings,
As, when a bell no longer swings,
Paint the holl...

Oh thou cruel deadly-lovely maiden,
Tell me what great sin have I committed,
That thou keep'st me to the rack thus fasten'd,
That thou hast thy solemn promise broken?

'Twas but yestere'en that thou with fondness
Press'd my hand, and these sweet accents murmured:
"Yes, I'll come, I'll come when morn approacheth,
Come, my friend, full surely to thy chamber."

On the latch I left my doors, unfasten'd,
Having first with care tried all the hinges,
And rejoic'd right well to find they creak'd not.

What a night of expectation pass'd I!
For I watch'd, and ev'ry chime I number'd;
If perchance I slept a few short moments,
Still my heart remain'd awake forever,
And awoke me from my gentle slumbers.

Yes, then bless'd I night's o'erhanging darkness,<...

Roses, brier on brier,
Like a hedge of fire,
Walled it from the world and rolled
Crimson 'round it; manifold
Blossoms, 'mid which once of old
Walked my Heart's Desire.

There the golden Hours
Dwelt; and 'mid the bowers
Beauty wandered like a maid;
And the Dreams that never fade
Sat within its haunted shade
Gazing at the flowers.

There the winds that vary
Melody and marry
Perfume unto perfume, went,
Whispering to the buds, that bent,
Messages whose wonderment
Made them sweet to carry.

There the waters hoary
Murmured many a story
To the leaves that leaned above,
Listening to their tales of love,
While the happiness thereof
Flushed their green with glory.

There the sunset's shimmer
'Mid the bower...