Betrayal

Passato è 'l tempo omai, lasso! che tanto.

HIS ONLY DESIRE IS AGAIN TO BE WITH HER.


    Fled--fled, alas! for ever--is the day,
Which to my flame some soothing whilom brought;
And fled is she of whom I wept and wrote:
Yet still the pang, the tear, prolong their stay!
And fled that angel vision far away;
But flying, with soft glance my heart it smote
('Twas then my own) which straight, divided, sought
Her, who had wrapp'd it in her robe of clay.
Part shares her tomb, part to her heaven is sped;
Where now, with laurel wreathed, in triumph's car
She reaps the meed of matchless holiness:
So might I, of this flesh discumberèd,
Which holds me prisoner here, from sorrow far
With her expatiate free 'midst realms of endless bliss!

WRANGHA...

Your hands, my dear, adorable,
Your lips of tenderness
Oh, I've loved you faithfully and well,
Three years, or a bit less.
It wasn't a success.

Thank God, that's done! and I'll take the road,
Quit of my youth and you,
The Roman road to Wendover
By Tring and Lilley Hoo,
As a free man may do.

For youth goes over, the joys that fly,
The tears that follow fast;
And the dirtiest things we do must lie
Forgotten at the last;
Even Love goes past.

What's left behind I shall not find,
The splendour and the pain;
The splash of sun, the shouting wind,
And the brave sting of rain,
I may not meet again.

But the years, that take the best away,
Give something in the end;
And a better friend than love have they,
For no...

Paupertas onus visa est grave.


Cold blows the wind, and while the tear
Bursts trembling from my swollen eyes,
The rain's big drop, quick meets it there,
And on my naked bosom flies!
O pity, all ye sons of Joy,
The little wand'ring Negro-boy.

These tatter'd clothes, this ice-cold breast
By Winter harden'd into steel,
These eyes, that know not soothing rest,
But speak the half of what I feel!
Long, long, I never new one joy,
The little wand'ring Negro-boy!

Cannot the sigh of early grief
Move but one charitable mind?
Cannot one hand afford relief?
One Christian pity, and be kind?
Weep, weep, for thine was never joy,
O little wand'ring Negro-boy!

Is there a good which men call Pleasure?
O Ozmyn, would that it were ...

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

        Oh, I am weary, weary, weary
            Of Pan and oaten quills
        And little songs that, from the dictionary,
            Learn lore of streams and hills,
        Of studied laughter, mocking what is merry,
            And calculated thrills!

        Are we grown old and past the time of singing?
            Is ardor quenched in art
        Till art is but a formal figure, bringing
            A money-measured heart,
        Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing
            Its bells about the mart?

        The race moves on, and leaves no wildernesses
            Where rugged voices cry;
        It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses
            The souls of men who die,
        And step by even step its rank p...

Once more we venture here, to prove our worth,
And ask indulgence kind, to tempt us forth:
Seek not perfection from our essays green,
That, in man's noblest works, has never been,
Nor is, nor e'er will be; a work exempt
From fault to form, as well might man attempt
T'explore the vast infinity of space,
Or fix mechanic boundaries to grace.
Hard is the finish'd Speaker's task; what then
Must be our danger, to pursue the pen
Of the 'rapt Bard, through all his varied turns,
Where joy extatic smiles, or sorrow mourns?
Where Richard's soul, red in the murtherous lave,
Shrinks from the night-yawn'd tenants of the grave,
While coward conscience still affrights his eye,
Still groans the dagger'd sound, "despair and die."
And hapless Juliet's unextinguish'd flame,
...

(On the Embankment in stormy weather.)


A livid sky on London
And like iron steeds that rear
A shock of engines halted,
And I knew the end was near:
And something said that far away, over the hills and far away,
There came a crawling thunder and the end of all things here.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down,
As digging lets the daylight on the sunken streets of yore,
The lightning looked on London town, the broken bridge of London town,
The ending of a broken road where men shall go no more.

I saw the kings of London town,
The kings that buy and sell,
That built it up with penny loaves
And penny lies as well:
And where the streets were paved with gold, the shrivelled paper shone for gold,
The scorching light of p...

Suggested By Hearing Her Voice During Services At Church.

At night, in visions, when my soul drew near
    The shadowy confines of the spirit land,
Wild, wondrous notes of song have met my ear,
    Wrung from their harps by many a seraph's hand;
And forms of light, too, more divinely fair
    Than Mercy's messenger to hearts that mourn,
On wings that made sweet music in the air,
    Have round me, in those hours of bliss, been borne,
And, filled with joy unutterable, I
Have deemed myself a born child of the sky.

And often, too, at sunset's magic hour,
    When musing by some solitary stream,
While thought awoke in its resistless pow'r,
    And restless Fancy wove her brightest dream:
Mysterious tongues, that were not of the earth,
    Have whispere...

Black Demons hovering o'er his mitred head,
To Caesar's Successor the Pontiff spake;
"Ere I absolve thee, stoop! that on thy neck
"Leveled with earth this foot of mine may tread."
Then he, who to the altar had been led,
He, whose strong arm the Orient could not check,
He, who had held the Soldan at his beck,
Stooped, of all glory disinherited,
And even the common dignity of man!
Amazement strikes the crowd: while many turn
Their eyes away in sorrow, others burn
With scorn, invoking a vindictive ban
From outraged Nature; but the sense of most
In abject sympathy with power is lost.

O! that you were your self; but, love you are
No longer yours, than you your self here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give:
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again, after yourself’s decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day
And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?
O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
You had a father: let your son say so.

There was a curious quiet for a space
Directly following: and in the face
Of one rapt listener pulsed the flush and glow
Of the heat-lightning that pent passions throw
Long ere the crash of speech. - He broke the spell -
The host: - The Traveler's story, told so well,
He said, had wakened there within his breast
A yearning, as it were, to know the rest -
That all unwritten sequence that the Lord
Of Righteousness must write with flame and sword,
Some awful session of His patient thought -
Just then it was, his good old mother caught
His blazing eye - so that its fire became
But as an ember - though it burned the same.
It seemed to her, she said, that she had heard
It was the Heavenly Parent never erred,
And not the earthly one that had such...

Less than the dust, beneath thy Chariot wheel,
Less than the rust, that never stained thy Sword,
Less than the trust thou hast in me, O Lord,
    Even less than these!

Less than the weed, that grows beside thy door,
Less than the speed of hours spent far from thee,
Less than the need thou hast in life of me.
    Even less am I.

Since I, O Lord, am nothing unto thee,
See here thy Sword, I make it keen and bright,
Love's last reward, Death, comes to me to-night,
    Farewell,    Zahir-u-din.

Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows
A tourney-trumpet on the listed hill;
Past is the splendour of the royal rose
And duchess daffodil.

Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space,
Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,
A ragged beggar with a lovely face,
Reigns the sad marigold.

And I have sought June's butterfly for days,
To find it like a coreopsis bloom
Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blaze
Of this sunflower's plume.

Here drones the bee; and there sky-daring wings
Voyage blue gulfs of heaven; the last song
The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings
Upon yon pear-tree's prong.

No angry sunset brims with rubier red
The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,
Pour in each blossom of this salvia-b...

Come with me, little maid,
Nay, shrink not, thus afraid
I'll harm thee not!
Fly not, my love, from me
I have a home for thee
A fairy grot,
Where mortal eye
Can rarely pry,
There shall thy dwelling be!

List to me, while I tell
The pleasures of that cell,
Oh, little maid!
What though its couch be rude,
Homely the only food
Within its shade?
No thought of care
Can enter there,
No vulgar swain intrude!

Come with me, little maid,
Come to the rocky shade
I love to sing;
Live with us, maiden rare
Come, for we "want" thee there,
Thou elfin thing,
To work thy spell,
In some cool cell
In stately Pentonville!

While Celia's Tears make sorrow bright,
Proud Grief sits swelling in her eyes;
The Sun, next those the fairest light,
Thus from the Ocean first did rise:
And thus thro' Mists we see the Sun,
Which else we durst not gaze upon.

These silver drops, like morning dew,
Foretell the fervour of the day:
So from one Cloud soft show'rs we view,
And blasting lightnings burst away.
The Stars that fall from Celia's eye
Declare our Doom in drawing nigh.

The Baby in that sunny Sphere
So like a Phaeton appears,
That Heav'n, the threaten'd World to spare,
Thought fit to drown him in her tears;
Else might th' ambitious Nymph aspire,
To set, like him, Heav'n too on fire.

Thee, whose refulgent staff and summons clear,
Minerva's flock longtime was wont t'obey,
Although thyself an herald, famous here,
The last of heralds, Death, has snatch'd away.
He calls on all alike, nor even deigns
To spare the office that himself sustains.

Thy locks were whiter than the plumes display'd
By Leda's paramour2 in ancient time,
But thou wast worthy ne'er to have decay'd,
Or, Aeson-like,3 to know a second prime,
Worthy for whom some Goddess should have won
New life, oft kneeling to Apollo's son.4

Commission'd to convene with hasty call
The gowned tribes, how graceful wouldst thou stand!
So stood Cyllenius5 erst in Priam's hall,
Wing-footed messenger of Jove's command,
And so, Eurybates6<...

I
Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
Life there, outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness:
One reconcilement.

Orbed as appointed,
Sister with brother
Joins, ne’er disjointed
One from the other.
All’s lend-and-borrow;
Good, see, wants evil,
Joy demands sorrow,
Angel weds devil!

“Which things must, why be?”
Vain our endeavor!
So shall things aye be
As they were ever.
“Such things should so be!”
Sage our desistence!
Rough-smooth let globe be,
Mixed, man’s existence!

Man, wise and foolish,
Lover and scorner,
Docile and mulish,
Keep each his corner!
Honey yet gall of it!
There’s the life lying,
And I see all ...

"The College will reopen Sept. --." `Catalogue'.


I was just aiming at the jagged hole
Torn in the yellow sandbags of their trench,
When something threw me sideways with a wrench,
And the skies seemed to shrivel like a scroll
And disappear... and propped against the bole
Of a big elm I lay, and watched the clouds
Float through the blue, deep sky in speckless crowds,
And I was clean again, and young, and whole.

Lord, what a dream that was! And what a doze
Waiting for Bill to come along to class!
I've cut it now -- and he -- Oh, hello, Fred!
Why, what's the matter? -- here -- don't be an ass,
Sit down and tell me! -- What do you suppose?
I dreamed I... AM I... wounded? "YOU ARE DEAD."