Betrayal

1.

When I hear you express an affection so warm,
Ne'er think, my belov'd, that I do not believe;
For your lip would the soul of suspicion disarm,
And your eye beams a ray which can never deceive.


2.

Yet still, this fond bosom regrets, while adoring,
That love, like the leaf, must fall into the sear,
That Age will come on, when Remembrance, deploring,
Contemplates the scenes of her youth, with a tear;


3.

That the time must arrive, when, no longer retaining
Their auburn, those locks must wave thin to the breeze,
When a few silver hairs of those tresses remaining,
Prove nature a prey to decay and disease.


4.

Tis this, my belov'd, which spreads gloom o'er my features,
Though I ne'er shall presume to ...

By such examples moved to unbought pains,
The people work like congregated bees;
Eager to build the quiet Fortresses
Where Piety, as they believe, obtains
From Heaven a 'general' blessing; timely rains
Or needful sunshine; prosperous enterprise,
Justice and peace: bold faith! yet also rise
The sacred Structures for less doubtful gains.
The Sensual think with reverence of the palms
Which the chaste Votaries seek, beyond the grave
If penance be redeemable, thence alms
Flow to the poor, and freedom to the slave;
And if full oft the Sanctuary save
Lives black with guilt, ferocity it calms.

    Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
        And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
        And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
    Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
    The summer through, and each departing wing,
        And all the nests that the bared branches show,
        And all winds that in any weather blow,
    And all the storms that the four seasons bring.

    You go no more on your exultant feet
        Up paths that only mist and morning knew,
    Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
        Of a bird's wings too high in air to view,--
    But you were something more than young and sweet
        And fair,--and the long year remembers you.

Begone, ye Critics, and restrain your spite,
Codrus writes on, and will for ever write,
The heaviest Muse the swiftest course has gone,
As clocks run fastest when most lead is on;
What tho' no bees around your cradle flew,
Nor on your lips distill'd their golden dew;
Yet have we oft discover'd in their stead
When you, like Orpheus, strike the warbling lyre.
Attentive blocks stand round you and admire.
Wit pass'd through thee no longer is the same,
As meat digested takes a diff'rent name;
But sense must sure thy safest plunder be,
Since no reprisals can be made on thee.
Thus thou may'st rise, and in thy daring flight
(Though ne'er so weighty) reach a wondrous height.
So, forced from engines, lead itself can fly,
Sure Bavius copied Maevius to the full,
And ...

True love, knight, as to a brother,
Yield I you again;
Ask me not for any other,
For it gives me pain.
Calmly I behold you come in,
Calm behold you go;
Your sad eyes the weeping dumb in
I nor read nor know.

And he hears her uncomplaining,
Tears him free by force;
To his heart but once her straining,
Flings him on his horse;
Sends to all his vassals merry
In old Switzerland;
To the holy grave they hurry,
White-crossed pilgrim band.

Mighty deeds, the foe outbraving,
Works their hero-arm;
From their helms the plumes float waving
Mid the heathen swarm;
Still his "Toggenburg" upwaking
Frays the Mussulman;
But his heart its grievous aching
Quiet never can.

One whole year he did endure it,
Then his...

'... O she,
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of Nothing.' - Tennyson.


'Tis the hour when golden slumbers
Through th' Hesperian portals creep,
And the youth who lisps in numbers
Dreams of novel rhymes to 'sleep';
I shall merely note, at starting,
That responsive Nature thrills
To the twilight hour of parting
From my Lady of the Hills.

Lady, 'neath the deepening umbrage
We have wandered near and far,
To the ludicrously dumb rage
Of your truculent Mamma;
We have urged the long-tailed gallop;
Lightly danced the still night through;
Smacked the ball, and oared the shallop
(In a vis-à-vis canoe);

We have walked this fair Oasis,
Keeping...

Stella, whence doth these new assaults arise,
A conquerd yeelding ransackt heart to winne,
Whereto long since, through my long-battred eyes,
Whole armies of thy beauties entred in?
And there, long since, Loue, thy lieutenant, lies;
My forces razde, thy banners raisd within:
Of conquest, do not these effects suffice,
But wilt new warre vpon thine own begin?
With so sweet voice, and by sweet Nature so
In sweetest stratagems sweete Art can show,
That not my soul, which at thy foot did fall
Long since, forc'd by thy beams, but stone nor tree,
By Sences priviledge, can scape from thee!

I pray! My little body and whole span
Of years is Thine, my Owner and my Man.
For Thou hast made me, unto Thee I owe
This dim, distressed half-soul that hurts me so,
Compact of every crime, but, none the less,
Broken by knowledge of its naughtiness.
Put me not from Thy Life, ’tis all I know.
If Thou forsake me, whither shall I go?

Thine is the Voice with which my Day begins:
Thy Foot my refuge, even in my sins.
Thine Honour hurls me forth to testify
Against the Unclean and Wicked passing by.
(But when Thou callest they are of Thy Friends,
Who readier than I to make amends?)
I was Thy Deputy with high and low,
If Thou dismiss me, whither shall I go?

I have been driven forth on gross offence
That took no reckoning of my penitence,
And, in m...

Pommi ove 'l sol occide i fiori e l' erba.

HIS INVINCIBLE CONSTANCY.


    Place me where herb and flower the sun has dried,
Or where numb winter's grasp holds sterner sway:
Place me where Phoebus sheds a temperate ray,
Where first he glows, where rests at eventide.
Place me in lowly state, in power and pride,
Where lour the skies, or where bland zephyrs play
Place me where blind night rules, or lengthened day,
In age mature, or in youth's boiling tide:
Place me in heaven, or in the abyss profound,
On lofty height, or in low vale obscure,
A spirit freed, or to the body bound;
Bank'd with the great, or all unknown to fame,
I still the same will be! the same endure!
And my trilustral sighs still breathe the same!

DACRE.

The path that winds by wood and stream
Is not the path for me to-day;
The path I take is one of dream,
That leads me down a twilight way.

By towns, where myths have only been;
By streams, no mortal foot hath crossed;
To gardens of hesperian sheen,
By halcyon seas for ever lost.

By forests, moonlight haunts alone,
(Diana with her silvery fawn;)
By fields, whereon the stars are sown,
(The wildflowers gathered of the Dawn.)

To orchards of eternal fruit,
That never mortal hand shall take;
Around whose central tree and root
Is coiled the never-sleeping Snake.

The Dragon, lost in listening, curled
Around the trunk whose fruit is gold:
The ancient wisdom of the world
Guarding the glory never old.

The one desire, that ...

        Dark!    Dark!    Dark!
The sun is set; the day is dead:
        Thy Feast has fled;
My eyes are wet with tears unshed;
        I bow my head;
Where the star-fringed shadows softly sway
        I bend my knee,
And, like a homesick child, I pray,
        Mary, to thee.

        Dark!    Dark!    Dark!
And, all the day -- since white-robed priest
        In farthest East,
In dawn's first ray -- began the Feast,
        I -- I the least --
Thy least, and last, and lowest child,
        I called on thee!
Virgin! didst hear? my words were wild;
        Didst think of me?

        Dark!    Dark!    Dark!
Alas! and no!    The angels bright,
        With wings as white
As a dream of snow in love and light,
        Flashe...

Over wastes of blasted heather,
Where the pine-trees stand together,
Evermore my footsteps wander,
Evermore the shadows yonder
Deepen into gloom.
Where there lies a silent lake,
No song-bird there its thirst may slake,
No sunshine now to whiteness wake
The water-lily's bloom.

Some sweet spring-time long departed,
I and she, the simple-hearted,
Bride and bridegroom, maid and lover,
Did that gloomy lake discover,
Did those lilies see.
There we wandered side by side.
There it was they said she died.
But ah! in this I know they lied!
She will return to me!

Never, never since that hour
Has the lake brought forth a flower.
Ever harshly do the sedges
Some sad secret from its edges
Whisper to the shore.
Some sad secret I ...

Between two pillared clouds of gold
The beautiful gates of evening swung --
And far and wide from flashing fold
The half-furled banners of light, that hung
O'er green of wood and gray of wold
And over the blue where the river rolled,
The fading gleams of their glory flung.

The sky wore not a frown all day
To mar the smile of the morning tide;
The soft-voiced winds sang joyous lay --
You never would think they had ever sighed;
The stream went on its sunlit way
In ripples of laughter; happy they
As the hearts that met at Riverside.

No cloudlet in the sky serene!
Not a silver speck in the golden hue!
But where the woods waved low and green,
And seldom would let the sunlight through,
Sweet shadows fell, and in their screen,
The faces of ...

There was a woman, and she was wise; woefully wise was she;
She was old, so old, yet her years all told were but a score and three;
And she knew by heart, from finish to start, the Book of Iniquity.

There is no hope for such as I, on earth nor yet in Heaven;
Unloved I live, unloved I die, unpitied, unforgiven;
A loathèd jade I ply my trade, unhallowed and unshriven.

I paint my cheeks, for they are white, and cheeks of chalk men hate;
Mine eyes with wine I make to shine, that men may seek and sate;
With overhead a lamp of red I sit me down and wait.

Until they come, the nightly scum, with drunken eyes aflame;
Your sweethearts, sons, ye scornful ones - 'tis I who know their shame;
The gods ye see are brutes to me - and so I play my game.

For life is n...

Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns:
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.

You'd think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they've been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.

A Long-Vacation Pastoral


VIII

Jam veniet virgo, jam dicetur hymenæus.

But a revulsion again came over the spirit of Elspie,
When she thought of his wealth, his birth and education:
Wealth indeed but small, though to her a difference truly;
Father nor mother had Philip, a thousand pounds his portion,
Somewhat impaired in a world where nothing is had for nothing;
Fortune indeed but small, and prospects plain and simple.
But the many things that he knew, and the ease of a practised
Intellect’s motion, and all those indefinable graces
(Were they not hers, too, Philip?) to speech, and manner, and movement,
Lent by the knowledge of self, and wisely instructed feeling,
When she thought of these, and these contemplated daily,
Daily appreciating mo...

An ancient chestnut’s blossoms threw
Their heavy odour over two:
Leucippe, it is said, was one;
The other, then, was Alciphron.
‘Come, come! why should we stand beneath?’
This hollow tree’s unwholesome breath?’
Said Alciphron, ‘here’s not a blade
Of grass or moss, and scanty shade.
Come; it is just the hour to rove
In the lone dingle shepherds love;
There, straight and tall, the hazel twig
Divides the crookàed rock-held fig,
O’er the blue pebbles where the rill
In winter runs and may run still.
Come then, while fresh and calm the air,
And while the shepherds are not there.’

Leucippe.    But I would rather go when they
                    Sit round about and sing and play.
                    Then why so hurry me? for you
                  ...

Beneath the trees with heedful step and slow
At night I go,
Fearful upon their whispering to break
Lest they awake
Out of those dreams of heavenly light that fill
Their branches still
With a soft murmur of memoried ecstasy.
There 'neath each tree
Nightlong a spirit watches, and I feel
His breath unseal
The fast-shut thoughts and longings of tired day,
That flutter away
Mothlike on luminous soft wings and frail
And moonlike pale.
There in the flowering chestnuts' bowering gloom
And limes' perfume
Wandering wavelike through the moondrawn night
That heaves toward light,
There hang I my dark thoughts and deeper prayers;
And as the airs
Of star-kissed dawn come stirring and o'er-creep
The ford of sleep,
Thy shape, great Love, grows sha...