Betrayal

Beside me, in the car, she sat,
She spake not, no, nor looked to me
From her to me, from me to her,
What passed so subtly, stealthily?
As rose to rose that by it blows
Its interchanged aroma flings;
Or wake to sound of one sweet note
The virtues of disparted strings.

Beside me, nought but this! but this,
That influent as within me dwelt
Her life, mine too within her breast,
Her brain, her every limb she felt
We sat; while o’er and in us, more
And more, a power unknown prevailed,
Inhaling, and inhaled, and still
’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

Beside me, nought but this; and passed;
I passed; and know not to this day
If gold or jet her girlish hair,
If black, or brown, or lucid-grey
Her eye’s young glance: the fickle chance
...

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

Crazed through much child-bearing
The moon is staggering in the sky;
Moon-struck by the despairing
Glances of her wandering eye
We grope, and grope in vain,
For children born of her pain.
Children dazed or dead!
When she in all her virginal pride
First trod on the mountain's head
What stir ran through the countryside
Where every foot obeyed her glance!
What manhood led the dance!
Fly-catchers of the moon,
Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem
But slender needles of bone;
Blenched by that malicious dream
They are spread wide that each
May rend what comes in reach.

I.

A Tortured tree in a huddled hollow,
On whose gnarled boughs three leaves are blowing:
A strip of path that the hunters follow,
That leads to fields of the wind's wild sowing,
And a rain-washed hill with the wild-thorn growing.

II.

And here one day, when the sky was raining,
And the wind came sharp as an Indian-arrow,
And Winter walked on the hills complaining,
I found a blossom of summer yarrow,
In the freezing wet, where the way was narrow.

III.

Its dim white umble was bravely lifted,
Defying Winter and wind and weather,
Facing the rout as they whirled and shifted,
Twisting its blossom and leaves together,
Its fern-fair leaves that were sweet as the heather.

IV.

And I thought, as I saw it there so f...

I love my mother, the wildwood,
I sleep upon her breast;
A day or two of childhood,
And then I sink to rest.

I had once a lovely sister --
She was cradled by my side;
But one Summer day I missed her --
She had gone to deck a bride.

And I had another sister,
With cheeks all bright with bloom;
And another morn I missed her --
She had gone to wreathe a tomb.

And they told me they had withered,
On the bride's brow and the grave;
Half an hour, and all their fragrance
Died away, which heaven gave.

Two sweet-faced girls came walking
Thro' my lonely home one day,
And I overheard them talking
Of an altar on their way.

They were culling flowers around me,
And I said a little prayer
To go with them -- and they f...

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. -
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
- I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once, you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?

The sound of the closing outside door was all.
You made no sound in the grass with your footfall,
As far as you went from the door, which was not far;
But had awakened under the morning star
The first song-bird that awakened all the rest.
He could have slept but a moment more at best.
Already determined dawn began to lay
In place across a cloud the slender ray
For prying across a cloud the slender ray
For prying beneath and forcing the lids of sight,
And loosing the pent-up music of over-night.
But dawn was not to begin their 'pearly-pearly;
(By which they mean the rain is pearls so early,
Before it changes to diamonds in the sun),
Neither was song that day to be self-begun.
You had begun it, and if there needed proof,
I was asleep still under the dripping roo...

After T. I.

    As I laye a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge,
O softlye moaned the dove to her mate within the tree,
    And meseemed unto my syghte
    Came rydynge many a knyghte
    All cased in armoure bryghte
        Cap-a-pie,
As I laye a-dreamynge, a goodlye companye!

    As I laye a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge,
O sadlye mourned the dove, callynge long and callynge lowe,
    And meseemed of alle that hoste
    Notte a face but was the ghoste
    Of a friend that I hadde loste
        Long agoe.
    As I laye a-dreamynge, oh, bysson teare to flowe!

    As I laye a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge, a-dreamynge,
O sadlye sobbed the dove as she seemed to despayre,
    And laste upon the tracke
    Came one I hayled as 'Jacke!'

Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high
Traveling where she from time to time enshrouds
Her head, and nothing loth her Majesty
Renounces, till among the scattered clouds
One with its kindling edge declares that soon
Will reappear before the uplifted eye
A Form as bright, as beautiful a moon,
To glide in open prospect through clear sky.
Pity that such a promise e'er should prove
False in the issue, that yon seeming space
Of sky should be in truth the steadfast face
Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move
(By transit not unlike man's frequent doom)
The Wanderer lost in more determined gloom.

Cicely says you’re a poet; maybe, I ain’t much on rhyme:
I reckon you’d give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
Poetry! that’s the way some chaps puts up an idee,
But I takes mine “straight without sugar,” and that’s what’s the matter with me.

Poetry! just look round you, alkali, rock, and sage;
Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain’t it a pretty page!
Sun in the east at mornin’, sun in the west at night,
And the shadow of this ’yer station the on’y thing moves in sight.

Poetry! Well now Polly! Polly, run to your mam;
Run right away, my pooty! By-by! Ain’t she a lamb?
Poetry! that reminds me o’ suthin’ right in that suit:
Jest shet that door thar, will yer? for Cicely’s ears is cute.

Ye noticed Polly, the baby? A month afore she was born,
Cicely my old woman...

I loved a little maiden
    In the golden years gone by;
She lived in a mill, as they all do
    (There is doubtless a reason why).
But she faded in the autumn
    When the leaves began to fade,
And the night before she faded,
    These words to me she said:
'Do not forget me, Henry,
    Be noble and brave and true;
But I must not bide, for the world is wide,
    And the sky above is blue.'

So I said farewell to my darling,
    And sailed away and came back;
And the good ship Jane was in port again,
    And I found that they all loved Jack.
But Polly and I were sweethearts,
    As all the neighbours know,
Before I met with the mill-girl
    Twenty years ago.
So I thought I would go and see her,
    But alas, she had faded ...

When Life's realities the Soul perceives
    Vain, dull, perchance corrosive, if she glows
    With rising energy, and open throws
    The golden gates of Genius, she achieves
His fairy clime delighted, and receives
    In those gay paths, deck'd with the thornless rose,
    Blest compensation. - Lo! with alter'd brows
    Lours the false World, and the fine Spirit grieves;
No more young Hope tints with her light and bloom
    The darkening Scene. - Then to ourselves we say,
    Come, bright IMAGINATION, come! relume
Thy orient lamp; with recompensing ray
    Shine on the Mind, and pierce its gathering gloom
    With all the fires of intellectual Day!

In the beginning God made thee
A woman well to look upon,
Thy tender body as a tree
Whereon cool wind hath always blown
Till the clean branches be well grown.

There was none like thee in the land;
The girls that were thy bondwomen
Did bind thee with a purple band
Upon thy forehead, that all men
Should know thee for God’s handmaiden.

Strange raiment clad thee like a bride,
With silk to wear on hands and feet
And plates of gold on either side:
Wine made thee glad, and thou didst eat
Honey, and choice of pleasant meat.

And fishers in the middle sea
Did get thee sea-fish and sea-weeds
In colour like the robes on thee;
And curious work of plaited reeds,
And wools wherein live purple bleeds.

And round the edges of thy cup<...

I love the thought of ancient, naked days
When Phoebus gilded statues with his rays.
Then women, men in their agility
Played without guile, without anxiety,
And, while the sky stroked lovingly their skin,
They tuned to health their excellent machine.
Cybele, in offering her bounty there,
Found mortals not a heavy weight to bear,
But, she-wolf full of common tenderness,
From her brown nipples fed the universe.
Man had the right, robust and flourishing,
Of pride in beauties who proclaimed him king;
Pure fruit unsullied, lovely to the sight,
Whose smooth, firm flesh went asking for the bite!

Today, the Poet, when he would conceive
These native grandeurs, where can now be seen
Women and men in all their nakedness,
Feels in his soul a chill of hopelessne...

I have passed the day 'mid the forest gay,
    In its gorgeous autumn dyes,
Its tints as bright and as fair to the sight
    As the hues of our sunset skies;
And the sun's glad rays veiled by golden haze,
    Streamed down 'neath its arches grand,
And with magic power made scene and hour
    Like a dream of Faerie Land.

The emerald sheen of the maple green
    Is turned to deep, rich red;
And the boughs entwine with the crimson vine
    That is climbing overhead;
While, like golden sheaves, the saffron leaves
    Of the sycamore strew the ground,
'Neath birches old, clad in shimmering gold,
    Or the ash with red berries crowned.

Stately and tall, o'er its sisters all,
    Stands the poplar, proud and lone,
Every silvery leaf in restless...

Weep not for him who, in the battle dying,
Lives in the lays of those he sought to save;
Weep not for him who on the cold turf lying,
Finds in his native land a patriot's grave;
Weep not for him for whom the night wind, sighing,
Spreads o'er his bier the banner of the brave;
But, o'er the ashes of the dead hussar,
Shout to the thunder and the trump of war.

Go weep for her who, by her Love's side sighing,
Gives to the grave the form she loved so well;
And weep for her who meets no soft replying
To the sweet story she would die to tell;
Aye, weep for her whose Love, to Lethe flying,
Left on her lip no mark of his farewell;
Oh, weep for her whose star of life is dim;
Weep, weep for her; but weep no more for him.

"She was a phantom," &c.

In lone Glenartney's thickets lies couched the lordly stag,
The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag;
And plodding ploughmen's weary steps insensibly grow quicker,
As broadening casements light them on towards home, or home-brewed liquor.

It is (in fact) the evening - that pure and pleasant time,
When stars break into splendour, and poets into rhyme;
When in the glass of Memory the forms of loved ones shine -
And when, of course, Miss Goodchild's is prominent in mine.

Miss Goodchild! - Julia Goodchild! - how graciously you smiled
Upon my childish passion once, yourself a fair-haired child:
When I was (no doubt) profiting by Dr. Crabb's instruction,
And sent those streaky lollipops home for your fairy suction!

...

    Moonlit woodland, veils of green,
    Caves of empty dark between;
    Veils of green from rounded arms
    Drooping, that the moonlight charms.
    Tranced the trees, grass beneath
    Silent....
            Like a stealthy breath,
    Mask and wand and silver skin,
    Sudden enters Harlequin.

    Hist!    Hist!    Watch him go,
    Leaping limb and pointing toe,
    Slender arms that float and flow,
    Curving wand above, below;
    Flying, gliding, changing feet;
    Onset fading in retreat.
    Not a shadow of sound there is
    But his motion's gentle hiss,
    Till one fluent arm and hand
    Suddenly circles, and the wand
    Taps a bough far overhead,
    "Crack," and then all noise is dead.
    For he halts, and a ...