Betrayal

WIFE

Reach out your arms, and hold me close and fast.
Tell me there are no memories of your past
That mar this love of ours, so great, so vast.

HUSBAND

Some truths are cheapened when too oft averred.
Does not the deed speak louder than the word?
(Dear God, that old dream woke again and stirred.)

WIFE

As you love me, you never loved before?
Though oft you say it, say it yet once more.
My heart is jealous of those days of yore.

HUSBAND

Sweet wife, dear comrade, mother of my child,
My life is yours by memory undefiled.
(It stirs again, that passion brief and wild.)

WIFE

You never knew a happier hour than this?
We two alone, our hearts surcharged with bliss,
Nor other kisses, sweet as my own kiss...

You ask what -- I have found, and far and wide I go:
Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's mur-
derous crew,
The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,
And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen,
where are they?
And there is an old beggar wandering in his pride -- -
His fathers served their fathers before Christ was
crucified.
i(O what of that, O what of that,)
i(What is there left to say?)

All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone,
But there's no good complaining, for money's rant is
on.
He that's mounting up must on his neighbour mount,
And we and all the Muses are things of no account.
They have schooling of their own, but I pass their
schooling by,
What can they know that we know that know the
time to die?...

The Text is from the Jamieson-Brown MS., on which version Scott drew partly for his ballad in the Minstrelsy. Mrs. Brown recited the ballad again to William Tytler in 1783, but the result is now lost, with most of the other Tytler-Brown versions.

The Story.--One point, the maid's feint of death to escape from her father to her lover, is the subject of a ballad very popular in France; a version entitled Belle Isambourg is printed in a collection called Airs de Cour, 1607. Feigning death to escape various threats is a common feature in many European ballads.

It is perhaps needless to remark that no goshawk sings sweetly, much less talks. In Buchan's version (of forty-nine stanzas) the goshawk is exchanged for a parrot.


THE GAY GOSHAWK

    1.
    'O well's me o' my g...

"We are sending you, dear flowers,
Forth alone to die,
Where your gentle sisters may not weep
O'er the cold graves where you lie;
But you go to bring them fadeless life
In the bright homes where they dwell,
And you softly smile that 't is so,
As we sadly sing farewell.

O plead with gentle words for us,
And whisper tenderly
Of generous love to that cold heart,
And it will answer ye;
And though you fade in a dreary home,
Yet loving hearts will tell
Of the joy and peace that you have given:
Flowers, dear flowers, farewell!"

With no poetic ardour fir'd
I press the bed where Wilmot lay;
That here he lov'd, or here expir'd,
Begets no numbers grave or gay.

Beneath thy roof, Argyle, are bred
Such thoughts as prompt the brave to lie
Stretch'd out in honour's nobler bed,
Beneath a nobler roof — the sky.

Such flames as high in patriots burn,
Yet stoop to bless a child or wife;
And such as wicked kings may mourn,
When freedom is more dear than life.

    Approaching now the end of his abode
    On earth, Consalvo lay; complaining once,
    Of his hard fate, but now quite reconciled,
    When, in the midst of his fifth lustre, o'er
    His head oblivion, so longed-for, hung.
    As for some time, so, on his dying day,
    He lay, abandoned by his dearest friends:
    For in the world, few friends to him will cling,
    Who shows that he is weary of the world.
    Yet she was at his side, by pity led,
    In his lone wretchedness to comfort him,
    Who was alone and ever in his thought;
    Elvira, for her loveliness renowned;
    And knowing well her power; that a look,
    A single sweet and gracious word from her,
    A thousand-fold repeated in the heart,
    Devoted, of her hapless...

It hath been heretofore my chance to see
Horsemen with martial order shifting camp,
To onset sallying, or in muster rang'd,
Or in retreat sometimes outstretch'd for flight;
Light-armed squadrons and fleet foragers
Scouring thy plains, Arezzo! have I seen,
And clashing tournaments, and tilting jousts,
Now with the sound of trumpets, now of bells,
Tabors, or signals made from castled heights,
And with inventions multiform, our own,
Or introduc'd from foreign land; but ne'er
To such a strange recorder I beheld,
In evolution moving, horse nor foot,
Nor ship, that tack'd by sign from land or star.

With the ten demons on our way we went;
Ah fearful company! but in the church
With saints, with gluttons at the tavern's mess.

Still earnest on the pitch...

                "A riddling world!" one cried.
    "If pangs must be, would God that they were sent
    To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside
                The holy innocent!"

                But I, "Ah no, no, no!
    Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fall
    For a child’s agony; not a martyr’s woe;
                Not these, not these appal.

                "Not docile motherhood,
    Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress;
    Not shedding of the unoffending blood;
                Not little joy grown less;

                "Not all-benign old age
    With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints
    And still pursues; not the vile heritage
                Of sin’s disease in saints;

                "Not thes...

Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad,
Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw;
Sending sad shadows after things not sad,
Peopling the harmless fields with signs of woe:
Beneath her sway, a simple forest cry
Becomes an echo of man's misery.

Blithe ravens croak of death; and when the owl
Tries his two voices for a favourite strain
'Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!' the unsuspecting fowl
Forebodes mishap or seems but to complain;
Fancy, intent to harass and annoy,
Can thus pervert the evidence of joy.

Through border wilds where naked Indians stray,
Myriads of notes attest her subtle skill;
A feathered task-master cries, "Work away!"
And, in thy iteration, "Whip poor will!"
Is heard the spirit of a toil-worn slave,
Lashed out of life, not quiet in the g...

Alone upon the housetops to the North
I turn and watch the lightnings in the sky,
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die.

Below my feet the still bazar is laid,
Far, far below the weary camels lie,
The camels and the captives of thy raid.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father's house am I,
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow . . .
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
    Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe . . .
'Du lieber Gott!'

Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
And there the shadowed waters fresh
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll German Jews
Drink bee...

    I

    The stream goes fast.
    When this that is the present is the past,
    'Twill be as all the other pasts have been,
    A failing hill, a daily dimming scene,
    A far strange port with foreign life astir
    The ship has left behind, the voyager
    Will never return to; no, nor see again,
    Though with a heart full of longing he may strain
    Back to project himself, and once more count
    The boats, the whitened walls that climbed the mount,
    Mark the cathedral's roof, the gathered spires,
    The vanes, the windows red with sunset's fires,
    The gap of the market-place, and watch again
    The coloured groups of women, and the men
    Lounging at ease along the low stone wall
    That fringed the harbour; and there beyond it all<...

Your words, my friend, (right healthfull caustiks), blame
My young mind marde, whom Loue doth windlas so;
That mine owne writings, like bad seruants, show
My wits quicke in vaine thoughts, in vertue lame;
That Plato I read for nought but if he tame
Such coltish yeeres; that to my birth I owe
Nobler desires, lest else that friendly foe,
Great expectation, wear a train of shame:
For since mad March great promise made of mee,
If now the May of my yeeres much decline,
What can be hop'd my haruest-time will be?
Sure, you say well, Your wisedomes golden myne
Dig deepe with Learnings spade. Now tell me this:
Hath this world aught so fair as Stella is?

Ah, Postumus, we all must go:
This keen North-Easter nips my shoulder;
My strength begins to fail; I know
You find me older;

I've made my Will. Dear, faithful friend--
My Muse's friend and not my purse's!
Who still would hear and still commend
My tedious verses,

How will you live--of these deprived?
I've learned your candid soul. The venal,--
The sordid friend had scarce survived
A test so penal;

But you--Nay, nay, 'tis so. The rest
Are not as you: you hide your merit;
You, more than all, deserve the best
True friends inherit;--

Not gold,--that hearts like yours despise;
Not "spacious dirt" (your own expression),
No; but the rarer, dearer prize--
The Life's Confession!

You catch my thought? What! Can't you gues...

When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
    Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
    The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
    The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
    And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.

But in the city, like a wounded thing
    That limps to cover from the angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing,
    And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with cruel fervor ring
    In many a high and dreary sleeping place.

When dull November's misty shroud,
All Nature's charms depress,
Flinging a damp, dark, deadening cloud,
O'er each heart's joyousness.
Our fancies quit their lighter vein,
And out from Memory's shrine,
We marshal thoughts of grief and pain,
Known, - once upon a time.

'Tis then that faces, long forgot,
In shadows reappear; -
Voices, that once we heeded not,
Come whispering in the ear;
And ghosts of friends whom once we met,
When life was in its prime,
Recall acts we would fain forget,
Done, - once upon time.

Regretfull sighs for thoughtless deeds,
That worked another wrong;
Vows that we broke, like rotten reeds
Like spectres glide along;
Tears naught avail to heal the smart,
We caused - nor deemed it crime,
Whilst selfis...

1.
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, -
Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

2.
Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

3.
The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,

These are not dewdrops, these are tears,
And tears by Sally shed
For absent Robin, who she fears,
With too much cause, is dead.


One morn he came not to her hand
As he was wont to come,
And, on her finger perch’d, to stand
Picking his breakfast-crumb.


Alarm’d, she call’d him, and perplex’d,
She sought him, but in vain—
That day he came not , nor the next,
Nor ever came again.


She therefore raised him here a tomb,
Though where he fell, or how,
None knows—so secret was his doom,
Nor where he moulders now.


Had half a score of coxcombs died
In social Robin’s stead,
Poor Sally’s tears had soon been dried,
Or haply never shed.


But Bob was neither rudely bold
Nor spiritlessly tame;