Betrayal

Come, gentle sleep, with the holy night,
Come with the stars and the white moonbeams,
Come with your train of handmaids bright,
Blessed and beautiful dreams.

Bring the exile to his home again,
Let him catch the gleam of its low white wall;
Let his wife cling to his neck and weep,
And his children come at their father's call.

Give to the mother the child she lost,
Laid from her heart to a clay-cold bed;
Let its breath float over her tear-wet cheek,
And her cold heart warm 'neath its bright young head.

Take the sinner's hand and lead him back
To his sinless youth and his mother's knee;
Let him kneel again 'neath her tender look,
And murmur the prayer of his infancy.

Lead the aged into that wondrous clime,
Home of their youth and land...

    'Tis hard, my friend, to write in such an age,
    As damns, not only poets, but the stage.
    That sacred art, by Heaven itself infused,
    Which Moses, David, Solomon have used,
    Is now to be no more: the Muses' foes
    Would sink their Maker's praises into prose.
    Were they content to prune the lavish vine
    Of straggling branches, and improve the wine,
    Who but a madman would his thoughts defend?
    All would submit; for all but fools will mend.
    But when to common sense they give the lie,
    And turn distorted words to blasphemy,
    They give the scandal; and the wise discern,
    Their glosses teach an age, too apt to learn.
    What I have loosely, or profanely, writ,
    Let them to fires, their due desert, commit:
    Nor, when...

What is a mine - a treasury - a dower -
A magic talisman of mighty power?
A poet's wide possession of the earth.
He has th' enjoyment of a flower's birth
Before its budding - ere the first red streaks, -
And Winter cannot rob him of their cheeks.

Look - if his dawn be not as other men's!
Twenty bright flushes - ere another kens
The first of sunlight is abroad - he sees
Its golden 'lection of the topmost trees,
And opes the splendid fissures of the morn.

When do his fruits delay, when doth his corn
Linger for harvesting? Before the leaf
Is commonly abroad, in his piled sheaf
The flagging poppies lose their ancient flame.
No sweet there is, no pleasure I can name,
But he will sip it first - before the lees.
'Tis his to taste rich honey, - ere th...

I

Descend ye Nine! descend and sing;
The breathing instruments inspire,
Wake into voice each silent string,
And sweep the sounding lyre!
In a sadly-pleasing strain
Let the warbling lute complain:
Let the loud trumpet sound,
'Till the roofs all around
The shrill echo's rebound:
While in more lengthen'd notes and slow,
The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.
Hark! the numbers, soft and clear,
Gently steal upon the ear;
Now louder, and yet louder rise,
And fill with spreading sounds the skies;
Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,
In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats;
'Till, by degrees, remote and small,
The strains decay,
And melt away,
In a dying, dying fall.

II

By Music, minds an equal tem...

    I.

    A glory on the chamber wall!
    A glory in the brain!
    Triumphant floods of glory fall
    On heath, and wold, and plain.

    Earth lieth still in hopeless bliss;
    She has, and seeks no more;
    Forgets that days come after this,
    Forgets the days before.

    Each ripple waves a flickering fire
    Of gladness, as it runs;
    They laugh and flash, and leap and spire,
    And toss ten thousand suns.

    But hark! low, in the world within,
    One sad aeolian tone:
    "Ah! shall we ever, ever win
    A summer of our own?"


    II.

    A morn of winds and swaying trees--
    Earth's jubilance rushing out!
    The birds are fighting with the breeze;
    The waters heave about...

Though red my blood hath left its trail
For five far miles, I shall not fail,
As God in Heaven wills!
The way was long through that black land.
With sword on hip and horn in hand,
At last before thy walls I stand,
O Lady of the Hills!

No seneschal shall put to scorn
The summons of my bugle-horn!
No man-at-arms shall stay!
Yea! God hath helped my strength too far
By bandit-caverned wood and scar
To give it pause now, or to bar
My all-avenging way.

This hope still gives my body strength
To kiss her eyes and lips at length
Where all her kin can see;
Then 'mid her towers of crime and gloom,
Sin-haunted like the Halls of Doom,
To smite her dead in that wild room
Red-lit with revelry.

Madly I rode; nor once did slack.
...

On must we go: we search dead leaves,
We chase the sunset's saddest flames,
The nameless hues that o'er and o'er
In lawless wedding lost their names.

God of the daybreak! Better be
Black savages; and grin to gird
Our limbs in gaudy rags of red,
The laughing-stock of brute and bird;

And feel again the fierce old feast,
Blue for seven heavens that had sufficed,
A gold like shining hoards, a red
Like roses from the blood of Christ.

Geraldine, Geraldine,
Do you remember where
The willows used to screen
The water flowing fair?
The mill-stream's banks of green
Where first our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Geraldine, Geraldine,
Do you remember how
From th' old bridge we would lean
The bridge that's broken now
To watch the minnows sheen,
And the ripples of the Run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Geraldine, Geraldine
Do you remember too
The old beech-tree, between
Whose roots the wild flowers grew?
Where oft we met at e'en,
When stars were few or none,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Geraldine, Geraldine,
The bark has grown around
The names I cut therein,
And the...

Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy,
Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy;
Darkness for sighing and daylight for song,--
Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong.
All the night through, though I moan in the dark,
I wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves,
Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves.
But when the first hue of dawn tints the sky,
I shall shake out my wings like the birds and be dry;
And though, like the rain-drops, I grieved through the dark,
I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

On the high hills of heaven, some morning to be,
Where the rain shall not grieve thro' the leaves of the tree,
There my heart will be glad for the pain I have known,
For my hand will be...

When Time a mellowing tint has thrown
O'er many a scene to mem'ry dear.
It scatters round a charm, unknown
When first th' impression rested there.

But, oh! should distance intervene,
Should Ocean's wave, should changeful clime.
Divide - how sweeter far the scene!
How richer ev'ry tint of time!

E'en thus with those (a treasur'd few)
Who gladden'd life with many a smile,
Tho' long has pass'd the sad adieu,
In thought we love to dwell awhile.

Then with keen eye, and beating heart,
The anxious mind still seeks relief
From those who can the tale impart,
How pass their day, in joy or grief.

If haply health and fortune bless,
We feel as if on us they shone;
If sickness and if sorrow press,
Then feeling makes their woes our own.<...

My beauty lives in a cottage grey by a gentle river's mouth,
A cottage grey by the lone sea-shore away in the sunny south,
Her eye's as fair, oh fairer, than the moonlight o'er the sea,
And I love to look in my darling's face as she sits and sings to me.

I'm as happy as a monarch as she lingers at my side,
As we watch the far horizon of the ever-tossing tide,
While the cool refreshing zephyr bears her tresses in its train,
Now starting into motion and now slumbering again.

She trips beside the waters on the distant yellow sand
While holy vespers steal across the ocean and the land,
And the sea bears the reflection of the worlds that roll above
And every breath of even seems to whisper but of love.

Oh what to me is Glory, what is Power, what is Pride!
I care...

--"His candle shined upon my head, and by his light I walked
through darkness."--Job, xxix. 3


On the bird of air blue-breasted
    glint the rays of gold,
And a shadowy fleece above us
    waves the forest old,
Far through rumorous leagues of midnight
    stirred by breezes warm.
See the old ascetic yonder,
    Ah, poor withered form!
Where he crouches wrinkled over
    by unnumbered years
Through the leaves the flakes of moonfire
    fall like phantom tears.
At the dawn a kingly hunter
    passed proud disdain,
Like a rainbow-torrent scattered
    flashed his royal train.
Now the lonely one unheeded
    seeks earth's caverns dim,
Never king or princes will robe them
    radiantly as him.
Mid the deep enfolding darknes...

    Wandering from the parent bough,
    Little, trembling leaf,
    Whither goest thou?
    "From the beech, where I was born,
    By the north wind was I torn.
    Him I follow in his flight,
    Over mountain, over vale,
    From the forest to the plain,
    Up the hill, and down again.
    With him ever on the way:
    More than that, I cannot say.
    Where I go, must all things go,
    Gentle, simple, high and low:
    Leaves of laurel, leaves of rose;
    Whither, heaven only knows!"

Dear heart, good-night!
Nay, list awhile that sweet voice singing
When the world is all so bright,
And the sound of song sets the heart a-ringing,
Oh, love, it is not right--
Not then to say, "Good-night."

Dear heart, good-night!
The late winds in the lake weeds shiver,
And the spray flies cold and white.
And the voice that sings gives a telltale quiver--
"Ah, yes, the world is bright,
But, dearest heart, good-night!"

Dear heart, good-night!
And do not longer seek to hold me!
For my soul is in affright
As the fearful glooms in their pall enfold me.
See him who sang how white
And still; so, dear, good-night.

Dear heart, good-night!
Thy hand I 'll press no more forever,
And mine eyes shall lose the light;
For the great ...

The first faint dawn was flushing up the skies
When, dreamland still bewildering mine eyes,
I looked out to the oak that, winter-long,
a winter wild with war and woe and wrong
Beyond my casement had been void of song.

And lo! with golden buds the twigs were set,
Live buds that warbled like a rivulet
Beneath a veil of willows. Then I knew
Those tiny voices, clear as drops of dew,
Those flying daffodils that fleck the blue,

Those sparkling visitants from myrtle isles,
Wee pilgrims of the sun, that measure miles
Innumerable over land and sea
With wings of shining inches. Flakes of glee,
They filled that dark old oak with jubilee,

Foretelling in delicious roundelays
Their dainty courtships on the dipping sprays,
How they should fashion nests...

Within a London garret high,
Above the roofs and near the sky,
My ill-rewarding pen I ply
To win me bread.
This little chamber, six by four,
Is castle, study, den, and more,--
Altho' no carpet decks the floor,
Nor down, the bed.

My room is rather bleak and bare;
I only have one broken chair,
But then, there's plenty of fresh air,--
Some light, beside.
What tho' I cannot ask my friends
To share with me my odds and ends,
A liberty my aerie lends,
To most denied.

The bore who falters at the stair
No more shall be my curse and care,
And duns shall fail to find my lair
With beastly bills.
When debts have grown and funds are short,
I find it rather pleasant sport
To live "above the common sort"
With all their ills.

Crime flourishes throughout the land,
    And bids defiance to the law,
And wicked deeds on every hand
    O'erwhelm our souls with awe!

I know one hardened criminal
    Whose maidenhood with crime begins;
Who, safe behind a prison wall,
    Should expiate her sins.

She is a thief whene'er she smiles,
    For then she steals my heart from me,
And keeps it with a maiden's wiles,
    And never sets it free.

She plunders sighs from humankind,
    She pilfers tears I would not weep,
She robs me of my peace of mind,
    And she purloins my sleep.

Of lawless ways she stands confessed,
    And is a burglar bold whene'er
She finds a weakness in my breast,
    And slyly enters there.

A gambler she, whose arts entrance,<...

Unwin, I should but ill repay
The kindness of a friend,
Whose worth deserves as warm a lay
As ever friendship penn’d,
Thy name omitted in a page
That would reclaim a vicious age.


A union form’d, as mine with thee,
Not rashly, or in sport,
May be as fervent in degree
And faithful in its sort,
And may as rich in comfort prove,
As that of true fraternal love.


The bud inserted in the rind,
The bud of peach or rose,
Adorns, though differing in its kind,
The stock whereon it grows,
With flower as sweet, or fruit as fair,
As if produced by nature there.


Not rich, I render what I may,
I seize thy name in haste,
And place it in this first essay,
Lest this should prove the last.
‘Tis where it should be—in...