Betrayal

Not to lament that rival flame
Wherewith the heartless Glycera scorns you,
Nor waste your time in maudlin rhyme,
How many a modern instance warns you!

Fair-browed Lycoris pines away
Because her Cyrus loves another;
The ruthless churl informs the girl
He loves her only as a brother!

For he, in turn, courts Pholoe,--
A maid unscotched of love's fierce virus;
Why, goats will mate with wolves they hate
Ere Pholoe will mate with Cyrus!

Ah, weak and hapless human hearts,
By cruel Mother Venus fated
To spend this life in hopeless strife,
Because incongruously mated!

Such torture, Albius, is my lot;
For, though a better mistress wooed me,
My Myrtale has captured me,
And with her cruelties subdued me!

"Return," we dare not as we fain
Would cry from hearts that yearn:
Love dares not bid our dead again
Return.
O hearts that strain and burn
As fires fast fettered burn and strain!
Bow down, lie still, and learn.
The heart that healed all hearts of pain
No funeral rites inurn:
Its echoes, while the stars remain,
Return.

Alone in my chamber, forsaken, unsought,
My spirit's enveloped in shadows of night,
Is there no one to give me a smile or a thought?
Is there none to restore to me faded delight?

The zephyrs disport with a light-bosomed song,
And the joy-laden songsters flit over the lea--
Yet the hours of the spring as they hurry along
Bring nothing but sadness and sighing to me!

There were friends--but their love is departed and dead,
And alone must the tear-drop disconsolate start,
All the beauty of Life, all its sweetness is fled,
Oh, who shall unburden this weight at my heart!

It was beneath a waning moon when all the woods were sear,
And winds made eddies of the leaves that whispered far and near,
I met her on the old mill-bridge we parted at last year.

At first I deemed it but a mist that faltered in that place,
An autumn mist beneath the trees that sentineled the race;
Until I neared and in the moon beheld her face to face.

The waver of the summer-heat upon the drouth-dry leas;
The shimmer of the thistle-drift a down the silences;
The gliding of the fairy-fire between the swamp and trees;

They qualified her presence as a sorrow may a dream
The vague suggestion of a self; the glimmer of a gleam;
The actual unreal of the things that only seem.

Where once she came with welcome and glad eyes all loving-wise,
She passed and g...

To a Lady who wrote under my likeness as Juliet, "Lieti giorni e felice."

Whence should they come, lady! those happy days
That thy fair hand and gentle heart invoke
Upon my head?    Alas! such do not rise
On any, of the many, who with sighs
Bear through this journey-land of wo, life's yoke.
The light of such lives not in thine own lays;
Such were not hers, that girl, so fond, so fair,
Beneath whose image thou hast traced thy pray'r.
Evil, and few, upon this darksome earth,
Must be the days of all of mortal birth;
Then why not mine?    Sweet lady! wish again,
Not more of joy to me, but less of pain;
Calm slumber, when life's troubled hours are past,
And with thy friendship cheer them while they last.

        Oh the elements varied - the exquisite plan -
        That are used in constructing the lovely young man!
        His face he has easily made to possess
        The expression of nothing within to express;
        His hair is oiled glossily back of his ears,
        Atop of his head an equator appears;
        His scanty mustache has symmetrical bends,
        Is groomed with precision, and waxed at both ends;
        His darling complexion, bewitching to see,
        Is powdered the same as a lady's might be.
        And this is the dear whom the newspapers rude
        Have scornfully treated, and christened the    -    - .

        The mental equipment I'll tell, if I can,
        That Nature has given the lovely young man:
        A set of emotions cons...

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

There's a little lake that lies
In a valley, where the skies
Kiss the mountains, as they rise,
On the crown;
And the heaven-born élite
Are accustomed to retreat
From the pestilential heat
Lower down.

Where the Mighty, for a space,
Mix with Beauty, Rank, and Grace,
(I myself was in the place,
At my best!)
And the atmosphere's divine,
While the deodar and pine
Are particularly fine
For the chest.

And a little month ago,
When the sun was lying low,
And the water lay aglow
Like a pearl,
I, remarkably arrayed,
Dipped an unobtrusive blade
In the lake - and in the shade -
With a girl.

O 'twas pleasant thus to glide
On the 'softly-flowing tide'
(Which it's not!) and, undescried,
Take a hand
...

High deeds, O Germans, are to come from you!
Thus in your books the record shall be found,
"A watchword was pronounced, a potent sound
ARMINIUS! all the people quaked like dew
Stirred by the breeze; they rose, a Nation, true,
True to herself the mighty Germany,
She of the Danube and the Northern Sea,
She rose, and off at once the yoke she threw.
All power was given her in the dreadful trance;
Those new-born Kings she withered like a flame."
Woe to them all! but heaviest woe and shame
To that Bavarian who could first advance
His banner in accursed league with France,
First open traitor to the German name!

    The anger past
    as a cat arches her back
    a thickly rich robust anger
    blackest coffee in a thick
    earthen mug
    this thug & mugger with sufficient
    silk thread.

    Yet the assassin is back
    with catcalls & hiss
    cortisol adrenalin that
    lunge like that cat
    rapid-fire along the back garden fence
    this patio stroll
    my senses black.

    And time luxuriating like a thick veil.

    That dread pack with
    anger in the lead
    - what prevokes it -
    obviously really
    a pack of violent
    running lies - wolves
    hell-bent running over
    intent on deceit,
    thievery, then some.

    A narrative with a long reach.

Lonely and sadly one night in November
    I laid down my weary head in search of repose
On my wallet of straw, which I long shall remember,
    Tired and weary I fell into a doze.
            Tired from working hard
            Down in the labour yard,
Night brought relief to my sad, aching brain.
            Locked in my prison cell,
            Surely an earthly hell,
I fell asleep and began for to dream.

I dreamt that I stood on the green fields of Erin,
    In joyous meditation that victory was won.
Surrounded by comrades, no enemy fearing.
    “Stand,” was the cry, “every man to his gun.”
            On came the Saxons then,
            Fighting our Fenian men,
Soon they’ll reel back from our piked volunteers.
            Loud was the fight an...

Pale hands I love beside the Shalimar,
    Where are you now?    Who lies beneath your spell?
Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far,
    Before you agonise them in farewell?

Oh, pale dispensers of my Joys and Pains,
    Holding the doors of Heaven and of Hell,
How the hot blood rushed wildly through the veins
    Beneath your touch, until you waved farewell.

Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float
    On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat,
    Crushing out life, than waving me farewell!

I


Now come,
And I that moment will forget you.
Sit here
And in your eyes I shall not see you.
Speak, speak
That I no more may hear your music.
Into my arms,
Till I've forgotten I ever met you.

I shall not have you when I hold you
Body to body,
Though your firm flesh, though your strong fingers
Be knit to these.
On a wild hill I shall be chasing
The thought of you;
False will be those true things I told you:
I shall forget you.

No, do not come.
Where the wind hunts, there shall I find you.
In cool gray cloud
Where the sun slips through I shall see you,
Or where the trees
Are silenced, and darken in their branches.
Your coming would
Loosen, when my thought still would bind you.

Against my...

Because I had loved so deeply,
Because I had loved so long,
God in His great compassion
Gave me the gift of song.

Because I have loved so vainly,
And sung with such faltering breath,
The Master in infinite mercy
Offers the boon of Death.

    Dweller in yon dungeon dark,
    Hangman of creation, mark!
    Who in widow-weeds appears,
    Laden with unhonoured years,
    Noosing with care a bursting purse,
    Baited with many a deadly curse?

Strophe.

    View the wither'd beldam's face,
    Can thy keen inspection trace
    Aught of Humanity's sweet melting grace?
    Note that eye, 'tis rheum o'erflows,
    Pity's flood there never rose.
    See these hands, ne'er stretch'd to save,
    Hands that took, but never gave.
    Keeper of Mammon's iron chest,
    Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest
    She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest!

Antistrophe.

    Plunderer of armies, lift thine eyes,
    (Awhile forbear, ye tort'ring fiends;)
    S...

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.
The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere.
We'll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune.
Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year.
We'll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear.

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
If yet we walk together, we need not shun the noon.
No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear,
We'll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear.

1875

Tumble me down, and I will sit
Upon my ruins, smiling yet;
Tear me to tatters, yet I'll be
Patient in my necessity.
Laugh at my scraps of clothes, and shun
Me, as a fear'd infection;
Yet, scare-crow-like, I'll walk as one
Neglecting thy derision.

The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc,
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
Crown'd with a helmet and dark hair the nameless female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven: no other arms she need!
Invulnerable though naked, save where clouds roll round her loins
Their awful folds in the dark air: silent she stood as night;
For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise,
But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay'd his fierce embrace.
'Dark Virgin,' said the hairy youth, 'thy father stern, abhorr'd,
Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;
Sometimes an Eagle screaming in the sky, som...