Betrayal

    Terminus shows the ways and says,
    "All things must have an end."
    Oh, bitter thought we hid away
    When first you were my friend.

    We hid it in the darkest place
    Our hearts had place to hide,
    And took the sweet as from a spring
    Whose waters would abide.

    For neither life nor the wide world
    Has greater store than this: -
    The thought that runs through hands and eyes
    And fills the silences.

    There is a void the agéd world
    Throws over the spent heart;
    When Life has given all she has,
    And Terminus says depart.

    When we must sit with folded hands,
    And see with inward eye
    A void rise like an arctic breath
    To hollow the morrow's sky.

    To-morrow...

Twas a night of dreadful horror, -
    Death was sweeping through the land;
And the wings of dark destruction
    Were outstretched from strand to strand

Strong men's hearts grew faint with terror,
    As the tempest and the waves
Wrecked their homes and swept them downward,
    Suddenly to yawning graves.

'Mid the wastes of ruined households,
    And the tempest's wild alarms,
Stood a terror-stricken mother
    With a child within her arms.

Other children huddled 'round her,
    Each one nestling in her heart;
Swift in thought and swift in action,
    She at least from one must part.

Then she said unto her daughter,
    "Strive to save one child from death."
"Which one?" said the anxious daughter,
    As she stood with b...

Raymond.

Dearest, that sit'st in dreams,
Through the window look, this way.
How changed and desolate seems
The world, Ida, to-day!
Heavy and low the sky is glooming:
Winter is coming!

Ida.

My dreaming heart is stirr'd:
Sadly the winter comes!
The wind is loud: how weird,
Heard in these darken'd rooms!
Speak to me, Raymond; ease this dread:
I am afraid, afraid.

Raymond.

Love, what is this? Like snow
Thy cheeks feel, snow they wear.
What ails my darling so?
What is it thou dost hear?
Close, close, thy soft arms cling to mine:
Tears on thy lashes shine.

Ida.

Hark! love, the wind wails by
The wet October trees,
Swaying them mournfully:
The wet leaves ...

I.

Bright red is the sun on the waves of Lough Sheelin,
A cool, gentle breeze from the mountain is stealing,
While fair round its islets the small ripples play,
But fairer than all is the Flower of Finae.


II.

Her hair is like night, and her eyes like grey morning,
She trips on the heather as if its touch scorning,
Yet her heart and her lips are as mild as May day,
Sweet Eily MacMahon, the Flower of Finae.


III.

But who down the hill-side than red deer runs fleeter?
And who on the lake-side is hastening to greet her?
Who but Fergus O'Farrell, the fiery and gay,
The darling and pride of the Flower of Finae?


IV.

One kiss and one clasp, and one wild look of gladness;
Ah! why do they change on a sudden...

Some louers speake, when they their Muses entertaine,
Of hopes begot by feare, of wot not what desires,
Of force of heau'nly beames infusing hellish paine,
Of liuing deaths, dere wounds, faire storms, and freesing fires:
Some one his song in Ioue and Ioues strange tales attires,
Bordred with buls and swans, powdred with golden raine:
Another, humbler wit, to shepherds pipe retires,
Yet hiding royall bloud full oft in rurall vaine.
To some a sweetest plaint a sweetest stile affords:
While teares poure out his inke, and sighes breathe out his words,
His paper pale despaire, and pain his pen doth moue.
I can speake what I feele, and feele as much as they,
But thinke that all the map of my state I display
When trembling voyce brings forth, that I do Stella loue.

Aw wander'd aght one summer's morn,
Across a meadow newly shorn;
Th' sun wor shinin breet and clear,
An fragrant scents rose up i'th' air,
An all wor still.
When, as my steps wor idly rovin,
Aw coom upon a seet soa lovin!
It fill'd mi heart wi' tender feelin,
As daan aw sank beside it, kneelin
O'th' edge o'th' hill.

It wor a little skylark's nest,
An two young babby burds, undrest,
Wor gapin wi' ther beaks soa wide,
Callin for mammy to provide
Ther mornin's meal;
An high aboon ther little hooam,
Th' saand o' daddy's warblin coom;
Ringin soa sweetly o' mi ear,
Like breathins throo a purer sphere,
He sang soa weel.

Ther mammy, a few yards away,
Wor hoppin on a bit o' hay;
Too feeard to coom, too bold to flee;
An wat...

Proud music of the storm!
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras!
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature's rhythmus, all the tongues of nations;
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses!
You formless, free, religious dances! you from the Orient!
You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts;
You sounds from distant guns, with galloping cavalry!
Echoes of camps, with all the different bugle-calls!
Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless,
Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber Why have you seiz'd me?

Come forward, O my Soul, and let the rest retire;
Listen lose not it is t...

What cometh here from west to east awending?
And who are these, the marchers stern and slow?
We bear the message that the rich are sending
Aback to those who bade them wake and know.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,
They bade us bide their leisure for our bread;
We craved to speak to tell our woeful learning:
We come back speechless, bearing back our dead.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

They will not learn; they have no ears to hearken.
They turn their faces from the eyes of fate;
Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken.
But...

In yonder old cathedral
Two lovely coffins lie;
In one, the head of the state lies dead,
And a singer sleeps hard by.

Once had that King great power
And proudly ruled the land--
His crown e'en now is on his brow
And his sword is in his hand.

How sweetly sleeps the singer
With calmly folded eyes,
And on the breast of the bard at rest
The harp that he sounded lies.

The castle walls are falling
And war distracts the land,
But the sword leaps not from that mildewed spot
There in that dead king's hand.

But with every grace of nature
There seems to float along--
To cheer again the hearts of men
The singer's deathless song.

        1.

        FROM thine, as then, the healing virtue goes
        Into our hearts--that is the Father's plan.
        From heart to heart it sinks, it steals, it flows,
        From these that know thee still infecting those.
        Here is my heart--from thine, Lord, fill it up,
        That I may offer it as the holy cup
        Of thy communion to my every man.

        2.

        When thou dost send out whirlwinds on thy seas,
        Alternatest thy lightning with its roar,
        Thy night with morning, and thy clouds with stars
        Or, mightier force unseen in midst of these,
        Orderest the life in every airy pore;
        Guidest men's efforts, rul'st mishaps and jars,--
        'Tis only for their hearts, and nothing more...

Flower! Flower, why repine?
God knows each creature's place;
He hides within me when I shine,
And your leaves hide His face.

And you are near as I to Him,
And you reveal as much
Of that eternal soundless hymn
Man's words may never touch.

God sings to man through all my rays
That wreathe the brow of night,
And walks with me thro' all my ways --
The everlasting light.

Flower! Flower, why repine?
He chose on lowly earth,
And not in heaven where I shine,
His Bethlehem and birth.

Flower! Flower, I see Him pass
Each hour of night and day,
Down to an altar and a Mass
Go thou! and fade away.

Fade away upon His shrine!
Thy light is brighter far
Than all the light wherewith I shine
In heaven, as a star.

How soothing sound the gentle airs that move
The innumerable leaves, high overhead,
When autumn first, from the long avenue,
That lifts its arching height of ancient shade,
Steals here and there a leaf!
    Within the gloom,
In partial sunshine white, some trunks appear,
Studding the glens of fern; in solemn shade
Some mingle their dark branches, but yet all,
All make a sad sweet music, as they move,
Not undelightful to a stranger's heart.
They seem to say, in accents audible,
Farewell to summer, and farewell the strains
Of many a lithe and feathered chorister,
That through the depth of these incumbent woods
Made the long summer gladsome.
    I have heard
To the deep-mingling sounds of organs clear,
(When slow the choral anthem rose beneath),
Th...

The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring;
The skylark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around
To the bells' cheerful sound;
While our sports shall be seen
On the echoing Green.

Old John, with white hair,
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk.
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say,
"Such, such were the joys
When we all--girls and boys--
In our youth-time were seen
On the echoing Green."

Till the little ones, weary,
No more can be merry:
The sun does descend,
And our sports have an end.
Round the laps of their mothers
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest,
And spo...

The little old poem that nobody reads
    Blooms in a crowded space,
Like a ground-vine blossom, so low in the weeds
    That nobody sees its face -
    Unless, perchance, the reader's eye
    Stares through a yawn, and hurries by,
    For no one wants, or loves, or heeds,
    The little old poem that nobody reads.

The little old poem that nobody reads
    Was written - where? - and when?
Maybe a hand of goodly deeds
    Thrilled as it held the pen:
    Maybe the fountain whence it came
    Was a heart brimmed o'er with tears of shame,
    And maybe its creed is the worst of creeds -
    The little old poem that nobody reads.

But, little old poem that nobody reads,
    Holding you here above
The wound of a heart that warmly bleeds
  ...

"[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]"

"A woman for whom great gods might strive!"
I said, and kissed her there:
And then I thought of the other five,
And of how charms outwear.

I thought of the first with her eating eyes,
And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,
And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,
And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.

And I thought of the fifth, whom I'd called a jade,
And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;
And that each had shown her a passable maid,
Yet not of the favour sought.

So I traced these words on the bark of a beech,
Just at the falling of the mast:
"After scanning five; yes, each and each,
I've found the woman desired at last!"

" I feel a strange benumbing spell,...

I

Now, in the thousandth year,
When April's near,
Now comes it that the great ones of the earth
Take all their mirth
Away with them, far off, to orchard-places,--
Nor they nor Solomon arrayed like these,--
To sun themselves at ease;
To breathe of wind-swept spaces;
To see some miracle of leafy graces;--
To catch the out-flowing rapture of the trees.
Considering the lilies.
                                            --Yes. And when
Shall they consider Men?

            (O showering May-clad tree,
            Bear yet awhile with me.)


II

For now at last, they have beheld the trees.
Lo, even these!--
The men of sounding laughter and low fears;
The women of light laughter, and no tears;
The great ones o...

This silver-edged geranium leaf
Is one sign of a bitter grief
Whose symbols are a myriad more;
They cluster round a carven stone
Where she who sleeps is never alone
For two hearts at the core,

Bound with her heart make one of three,
A trinity in unity,
One sentient heart that grieves;
And myriad dark-leaved memories keep
Vigil above the triune sleep, -
Edged all with silver are the leaves.

    [To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack of dogmatic statement]

    Not, I suppose, since I deny
    Appearance is reality,
    And doubt the substance of the earth
    Does your remonstrance come to birth;
    Not that at once I both affirm
    'Tis not the skin that makes the worm
    And every tactile thing with mass
    Must find its symbol in the grass
    And with a cool conviction say
    Even a critic's more than clay
    And every dog outlives his day.
    This kind of vagueness suits your view,
    You would not carp at it; for you
    Did never stand with those who take
    Their pleasures in a world opaque.
    For you a tree would never be
    Lovely were it but a tree,
    And earthly splendours never splendid