Betrayal

            I

    I hate this yoke; for the world's sake here put it on:
    Knowing 'twill weigh as much on you till life is gone.
    Knowing you love your freedom dear, as I love mine -
    Knowing that love unchained has been our life's great wine:
    Our one great wine (yet spent too soon, and serving none;
    Of the two cups free love at last the deadly one).


            II

    We grant our meetings will be tame, not honey-sweet
    No longer turning to the tryst with flying feet.
    We know the toil that now must come will spoil the bloom
    And tenderness of passion's touch, and in its room
    Will come tame habit, deadly calm, sorrow and gloom.
    Oh, how the battle scars the best who enter life!
    Each soldier comes out blind or...

If it so befalls that the midnight hovers
In mist no moonlight breaks,
The leagues of the years my spirit covers,
And my self myself forsakes.

And I live in a land of stars and flowers,
White cliffs by a silvery sea;
And the pearly points of her opal towers
From the mountains beckon me.

And I think that I know that I hear her calling
From a casement bathed with light -
Through music of waters in waters falling
Mid palms from a mountain height.

And I feel that I think my love's awaited
By the romance of her charms;
That her feet are early and mine belated
In a world that chains my arms.

But I break my chains and the rest is easy -
In the shadow of the rose,
Snow-white, that blooms in her garden breezy,
We meet and no one k...

They told her that he, to whose vows she had listened
    Thro' night's fleeting hours, was a spirit unblest;--
Unholy the eyes, that beside her had glistened,
    And evil the lips she in darkness had prest.

"When next in thy chamber the    bridegroom reclineth,
    "Bring near him thy lamp, when in slumber he lies;
"And there, as the light, o'er his dark features shineth,
    "Thou'lt see what a demon hath won all thy sighs!"

Too fond to believe them, yet doubting, yet fearing,
    When calm lay the sleeper she stole with her light;
And saw--such a vision!--no image, appearing
    To bards in their day-dreams, was ever so bright.

A youth, but just passing from childhood's sweet morning,
    While round him still lingered its innocent ray;
Tho' gleams...

I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company;
And lonely see the shooting stars appear,
Worlds rushing into judgment all the year.
O lead me onward to the loneliest shade,
The darkest place that quiet ever made,
Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold
And shut up green and open into gold.
Farewell to poesy--and leave the will;
Take all the world away--and leave me still
The mirth and music of a woman's voice,
That bids the heart be happy and rejoice.

1.
Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,
And infant Winter laughed upon the land
All cloudlessly and cold; - when I, desiring
More in this world than any understand,
Wept o'er the beauty, which, like sea retiring,
Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
Of my lorn heart, and o'er the grass and flowers
Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.

2.
Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
The instability of all but weeping;
And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep
I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
From unremembered dreams, shalt ... see
No death divide thy immortality.

3.
I loved - oh, no, I mean not one of ye,
Or an...

Oft the savage Tale in telling
Less of Love than Wrath and Hate,
Hath within its fierceness dwelling
Some pure note compassionate.

Mark, if rude their nature, stronger,
Manlier are the minds that keep
Thought on rightful vengeance longer
Than on those who can but weep.

Better sing the horrid battle
Than its cause of crime and wrong;
Sing great life-deeds! the death-rattle
Is too common for a song.

Lays where man in fight rejoices
Sang our Sires, from Sire to Son;
Heard and loved the hero voices,
"Dare, and more than life is won!"

1.
The golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down, -
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, -
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight; -
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.

2.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, - ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!

The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up, half down, as double-made,
Along the ground, against the sky.
And we, too! from such soul-height went
Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven,
We scarce knew if our nature meant
Most passionate earth or intense heaven.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

We paled with love, we shook with love,
We kissed so close we could no...

Mine is a wayward lay;
And, if its echoing rhymes I try to string,
Proveth a truant thing,
Whenso some names I love, send it away!

For then, eyes swimming o'er,
And clasped hands, and smiles in fondness meant,
Are much more eloquent,
So it had fain begone, and speak no more!

Yet shall it come again,
Ah, friend belov'd! if so thy wishes be,
And, with wild melody,
I will, upon thine ear, cadence my strain.

Cadence my simple line,
Unfashion'd by the cunning hand of Art,
But coming from my heart,
To tell the message of its love to thine!

As ocean shells, when taken
From Ocean's bed, will faithfully repeat
Her ancient music sweet,
Ev'n so these words, true to my heart, shall waken!

Oh! while our bark is seen,
O...

The seeds of treason choke up as they spring:
He acts the crime that gives it cherishing.

"Like the two Kings of Brentford smelling at one nosegay."


In Brentford town, of old renown,
There lived a Mister Bray,
Who fell in love with Lucy Bell,
And so did Mr. Clay.

To see her ride from Hammersmith,
By all it was allowed,
Such fair outsides are seldom seen,
Such Angels on a Cloud.

Said Mr. Bray to Mr. Clay,
You choose to rival me,
And court Miss Bell, but there your court
No thoroughfare shall be.

Unless you now give up your suit,
You may repent your love;
I who have shot a pigeon match,
Can shoot a turtle dove.

So pray before you woo her more,
Consider what you do;
If you pop aught to Lucy Bell -
I'll pop it into you.

Said Mr. Clay to Mr. Bray,
Your threats I quite explode;
...

In those good days when we were young and wise,
You spake to music, you with the thoughtful eyes,
And God looked down from heaven, pleased to hear
A young man's song arise so firm and clear.
Has Fancy died? The Morning Star gone cold?
Why are you silent? Have we grown so old?
Must I alone keep playing? Will not you,
Lord of the Measures, string your lyre anew?
Lover of Greece, is this the richest store
You bring us,--withered leaves and dusty lore,
And broken vases widowed of their wine,
To brand you pedant while you stand divine?
Decorous words beseem the learned lip,
But Poets have the nicer scholarship.

In English glades they watch the Cyprian glow,
And all the Maenad melodies they know.
They hear strange voices in a London street,
And track the ...

I

Who rises on the banks of Seine,
And binds her temples with the civic wreath?
What joy to read the promise of her mien!
How sweet to rest her wide-spread wings beneath
But they are ever playing,
And twinkling in the light,
And, if a breeze be straying,
That breeze she will invite;
And stands on tiptoe, conscious she is fair,
And calls a look of love into her face,
And spreads her arms, as if the general air
Alone could satisfy her wide embrace.
Melt, Principalities, before her melt!
Her love ye hailed her wrath have felt!
But She through many a change of form hath gone,
And stands amidst you now an armed creature,
Whose panoply is not a thing put on,
But the live scales of a portentous nature;
That, having forced its way from birth to bi...

In the fair morning of his life,
    When his pure heart lay in his breast,
    Panting, with all that wild unrest
To plunge into the great world's strife

That fills young hearts with mad desire,
    He saw a sunset. Red and gold
    The burning billows surged and rolled,
And upward tossed their caps of fire.

He looked. And as he looked, the sight
    Sent from his soul through breast and brain
    Such intense joy, it hurt like pain.
His heart seemed bursting with delight.

So near the Unknown seemed, so close
    He might have grasped it with his hand.
    He felt his inmost soul expand,
As sunlight will expand a rose.

One day he heard a singing strain -
    A human voice, in bird-like trills.
    He paused, and little raptur...

If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,
    To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?
    To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweeping
My songs forgone against my face and hair?

Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,
    My past poetic pain in the rain be weeping?
    No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,
And I shall die a poet unaware.

From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;
    And I, a singer though I cease to sing,
    Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe.

Through my indifferent words of every day,
    Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring
    And make my poem; and I shall not know.

I plead with tears to thee,
Sweet warbler of the shade,
Breathe not such strains to me,
The sweetest ever made.
Who bade thee slight my woes?
Who taught to pierce my heart?
Leave me to death's repose,
Depart, sweet bird, depart.

Still come, with every strain,
Warm dreams of woeless days;
Still beam, on life's past plain,
Love's long lost golden rays,
That gleam on forms gone by,
On friends I called my own,
Who calmly rest, while I,
Wild wandering, weep alone.

But if thou still must sing,
Sing of my endless woes,
Of Life, a poisoned spring,
Of Love, a scattered rose;
Wail-warble those who weep,
Wild-warble but the brave;
To the wearied, sing of sleep,
And sing, to me, the grave.

I

THE RIVER

Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat
Under the rustling poplars’ shade;
Silent the swans beside us float
None speaks, none heeds, ah, turn thy head.

Let those arch eyes now softly shine,
That mocking mouth grow sweetly bland:
Ah, let them rest, those eyes, on mine;
On mine let rest that lovely hand.

My pent-up tears oppress my brain,
My heart is swoln with love unsaid:
Ah, let me weep, and tell my pain,
And on thy shoulder rest my head.

Before I die, before the soul,
Which now is mine, must re-attain
Immunity from my control,
And wander round the world again:

Before this teas’d o’erlabour’d heart
For ever leaves its vain employ,
Dead to its deep habitual smart,
And dead to hopes o...

You felons on trial in courts;
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins, chain’d and hand-cuff’d with iron;
Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison?
Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with iron, or my ankles with iron?

You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or obscene in your rooms,
Who am I, that I should call you more obscene than myself?

O culpable!
I acknowledge, I exposé!
(O admirers! praise not me! compliment not me! you make me wince,
I see what you do not, I know what you do not.)

Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked;
Beneath this face that appears so impassive, hell’s tides continually run;
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me;
I walk with delinquents with passionate ...