Betrayal

I


When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,
Just at the time of opening apple-buds,
When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,
On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,
There is an unseen presence that eludes:--
Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling
The loamy odors of old solitudes,
Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leads
My soul to follow; now with dimpling words
Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds;
While here and there--is it her limbs that swing?
Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?


II


Or, haply, 't is a Naiad now who slips,
Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,
While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips,
The moisture rains cool music on the grass.
Her have ...

All night before the brink of death
    In fitful sleep the army lay,
For through the dream that stilled their breath
    Too gauntly glared the coming day.

But we, within whose blood there leaps
    The fulness of a life as wide
As Avon's water where he sweeps
    Seaward at last with Severn's tide,

We heard beyond the desert night
    The murmur of the fields we knew,
And our swift souls with one delight
    Like homing swallows Northward flew.

We played again the immortal games,
    And grappled with the fierce old friends,
And cheered the dead undying names,
    And sang the song that never ends;

Till, when the hard, familiar bell
    Told that the summer night was late,
Where long ago we said farewell
    We said far...

    This evening the Moon dreams more languidly,
        Like a beauty who on mounded cushions rests,
    And with her light hand fondles lingeringly,
        Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.

    On her soft satined avalanches' height
        Dying, she laps herself for hours and hours
    In long, long swoons, and gazes at the white
        Visions which rise athwart the blue like flowers.

    When sometimes in her perfect indolence
    She lets a furtive tear steal gently thence,
        Some pious poet, a lone, sleepless one,

    Takes in his hollowed hand this gem, shot through,
    Like an opal stone, with gleams of every hue,
        And in his heart's depths hides it from the sun.

    Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire,
    The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire.
    It's Etna, or Vesuvius, if those big things were small,
    And then 'tis but itself again, and does not smoke at all.
    And so my blood grows cold.    I say, "The bottle held but ink,
    And, if you thought it otherwise, the worser for your think."
    And then, just as I throw my scribbled paper on the floor,
    The bottle says, "Fe, fi, fo, fum," and steams and shouts some more.
    O sad deceiving ink, as bad as liquor in its way -
    All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day,
    And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom,
    And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom.
    And yet when I am extra good ...

That hour when thou and Grief were first acquainted
Thou wrotest, "Come, for I have lookt on death."
Piteous I held my indeterminate breath
And sought thee out, and saw how he had painted
Thine eyes with rings of black; yet never fainted
Thy radiant immortality underneath
Such stress of dark; but then, as one that saith,
"I know Love liveth," sat on by death untainted.

O to whom Grief too poignant was and dry
To sow in thee a fountain crop of tears!
O youth, O pride, set too remote and high
For touch of solace that gives grace to men!
Thy life must be our death, thy hopes our fears:
We weep, thou lookest strangely--we know thee then!

In midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded - of that indescribable look;
Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.


Of scenes of nature, fields and mountains;
Of skies, so beauteous after a storm - and at night the moon so unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.


Long, long have they pass'd - faces and trenches and fields;
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure - or away from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time - But now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

It's my grief that I am not a little white duck,
And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain;
I would not stay in Ireland for one week only,
To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.

Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking,
Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat,
Without high dances, without a big name, without music;
There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.

It's my grief that I am not an old crow,
I would sit for awhile up on the old branch,
I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am
With a grain of oats or a white potato

It's my grief that I am not a red fox,
Leaping strong and swift on the mountains,
Eating cocks and hens without pity,
Taking ducks and geese as a conquerer.

...

From Cypress and from laurel boughs
    Are twined, in sorrow and in pride,
The leaves that deck the mouldering brows
    Of those who for their country died:
In sorrow, that the sable pall
    Enfolds the valiant and the brave;
In pride that those who nobly fall
    Win garlands that adorn the grave.

The onset--the pursuit--the roar
    Of victory o'er the routed foe--
Will startle from their rest no more
    The fallen brave of Mexico.
To God alone such spirits yield!
    He took them in their strength and bloom,
When gathering, on the tented field,
    The garlands woven for the tomb.

The shrouded flag--the drooping spear--
    The muffled drum--the solemn bell--
The funeral train--the dirge--the bier--
    The mourners' sad and l...

What is she writing? Watch her now,
How fast her fingers move!
How eagerly her youthful brow
Is bent in thought above!
Her long curls, drooping, shade the light,
She puts them quick aside,
Nor knows that band of crystals bright,
Her hasty touch untied.
It slips adown her silken dress,
Falls glittering at her feet;
Unmarked it falls, for she no less
Pursues her labour sweet.

The very loveliest hour that shines,
Is in that deep blue sky;
The golden sun of June declines,
It has not caught her eye.
The cheerful lawn, and unclosed gate,
The white road, far away,
In vain for her light footsteps wait,
She comes not forth to-day.
There is an open door of glass
Close by that lady's chair,
From thence, to slopes of messy grass,
D...

The snow had fallen many nights and days;
The sky was come upon the earth at last,
Sifting thinly down as endlessly
As though within the system of blind planets
Something had been forgot or overdriven.
The dawn now seemed neglected in the grey
Where mountains were unbuilt and shadowless trees
Rootlessly paused or hung upon the air.
There was no wind, but now and then a sigh
Crossed that dry falling dust and rifted it
Through crevices of slate and door and casement.
Perhaps the new moon's time was even past.
Outside, the first white twilights were too void
Until a sheep called once, as to a lamb,
And tenderness crept everywhere from it;
But now the flock must have strayed far away.
The lights across the valley must be veiled,
The smoke lost in the greyness...

Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs,
pale, eyebrows blacked, eyes ‘tender’, ‘fatal’,
simpering still, and from their skinny ears
loosing their waterfalls of stone and metal:


Round the green baize, faces without lips,
lips without blood, jaws without the rest,
clawed fingers that the hellish fever grips,
fumbling an empty pocket, heaving breast:


below soiled ceilings, rows of pallid lights,
and huge candelabras shed their glimmer,
across the brooding brows of famous poets:
here it’s their blood and sweat they squander:


this the dark tableau of nocturnal dream
my clairvoyant eye once watched unfold.
In an angle of that silent lair, I leaned
hard on my elbows, envious, mute, and cold,


yes, envying that crew’s ten...

The sun shone white and fair,
This Eastertide,
Yet all its sweetness seemed but to deride
Our souls' despair;
For stricken hearts, and loss and pain,
Were everywhere.
We sang our Alleluias,--
We said, "The Christ is risen!
                From this His earthly prison,
                The Christ indeed is risen.
                He is gone up on high,
                To the perfect peace of heaven."

Then, with a sigh,
We wondered...
Our minds evolved grim hordes of huns,
Our bruised hearts sank beneath the guns,
On our very souls they thundered.
Can you wonder?--Can you wonder,
That we wondered,
As we heard the huns' guns thunder?
That we looked in one another's eyes
And wondered,--

"Is Christ indeed then risen from the ...

As on a hill-top rude, when closing day
Imbrowns the scene, some past'ral maiden fair
Waters a lovely foreign plant with care,
That scarcely can its tender bud display
Borne from its native genial airs away,
So, on my tongue these accents new and rare
Are flow'rs exotic, which Love waters there,
While thus, o sweetly scornful! I essay
Thy praise in verse to British ears unknown,
And Thames exchange for Arno's fair domain;
So Love has will'd, and oftimes Love has shown
That what He wills he never wills in vain.
Oh that this hard and steril breast might be
To Him who plants from heav'n, a soil as free.

A broken rainbow on the skies of May
Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:
Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost
Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray,
Touching the roses moist of memory
To die within the Present's grief of clouds -
A broken rainbow on the skies of May.

A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers,
Or red or white; its darting length of tongue
Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet,
And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet:
A love that put into expanding bowers
Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers
To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone -
A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers.

A foamy moon which thro' a night of fleece
Moves amber girt into a b...

        I.

I dreamed last night once more I stood
Knee-deep in purple clover leas;
Your old home glimmered thro' its wood
Of dark and melancholy trees,
Where ev'ry sudden summer breeze
That wantoned o'er the solitude
The water's melody pursued,
And sleepy hummings of the bees.


        II.

And ankle-deep in violet blooms
Methought I saw you standing there,
A lawny light among the glooms,
A crown of sunlight on your hair;
Wild songsters singing every where
Made lightning with their glossy plumes;
About you clung the wild perfumes
And swooned along the shining air.


        III.

And then you called me, and my ears
Grew flattered with the music, led
In fancy back to sweeter years,
Far sweeter y...

    Rest here, my horse, the night is dull, - the blood-sick stars are gone,
    Listen, for thou like me wert bred in far Saskatchewan.
    And this September night at home, under a happier sky,
    The bursting yellow sheaves upon the unbounded prairie lie.
    Bread, bread - the staff and stay of life - 'tis what the wheatlands yield;
    But only death and agony are gathered from this field.

    There's respite now, but ah! good friend, before another day,
    Although our bodies may be here, we, we, how far away!
    We've ridden many a weary mile, together we have fought
    For Freedom, honor and the right, and anything we've wrought
    Our Country to the Empire will still more closely bind.
    Ah! where the reddened maple leaf is fluttering in the wind,
    There ...

    A stepmother drove me from home, embittering me.
    A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.
    For years I was his mistress - no one knew.
    I learned from him the parasite cunning
    With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog.
    All the time I was nothing but "very private," with different men.
    Then Daniel, the radical, had me for years.
    His sister called me his mistress;
    And Daniel wrote me:
    "Shameful word, soiling our beautiful love!"
    But my anger coiled, preparing its fangs.
    My Lesbian friend next took a hand.
    She hated Daniel's sister.
    And Daniel despised her midget husband.
    And she saw a chance for a poisonous thrust:
    I must complain to the wife of Daniel's pursuit!
    But be...

The year was dying, and the day
Was almost dead;
The West, beneath a sombre gray,
Was sombre red.
The gravestones in the ghostly light,
'Mid trees half bare,
Seemed phantoms, clothed in glimmering white,
That haunted there.

I stood beside the grave of one,
Who, here in life,
Had wronged my home; who had undone
My child and wife.
I stood beside his grave until
The moon came up -
As if the dark, unhallowed hill
Lifted a cup.

No stone was there to mark his grave,
No flower to grace -
'T was meet that weeds alone should wave
In such a place.
I stood beside his grave until
The stars swam high,
And all the night was iron still
From sky to sky.

What cared I if strange eyes seemed bright
Within the gloom!<...