Betrayal

As the funeral train with its honoured dead
    On its mournful way went sweeping,
While a sorrowful nation bowed its head
    And the whole world joined in weeping,
I thought, as I looked on the solemn sight,
    Of the one fond heart despairing,
And I said to myself, as in truth I might,
    "How sad must be this SHARING."

To share the living with even Fame,
    For a heart that is only human,
Is hard, when Glory asserts her claim
    Like a bold, insistent woman;
Yet a great, grand passion can put aside
    Or stay each selfish emotion,
And watch, with a pleasure that springs from pride,
    Its rival - the world's devotion.

But Death should render to love its own,
    And my heart bowed down and sorrowed
For the stricken woman who wep...

I know her by her angry air,
Her bright black eyes, her bright black hair,
Her rapid laughters wild and shrill,
As laughters of the woodpecker
From the bosom of a hill.
’Tis Kate–she sayeth what she will;
For Kate hath an unbridled tongue,
Clear as the twanging of a harp.
Her heart is like a throbbing star.
Kate hath a spirit ever strung
Like a new bow, and bright and sharp
As edges of the scimitar.
Whence shall she take a fitting mate?
For Kate no common love will feel;
My woman-soldier, gallant Kate,
As pure and true as blades of steel.

Kate saith ‘the world is void of might.’
Kate saith ‘the men are gilded flies.’
Kate snaps her fingers at my vows;
Kate will not hear of lovers’ sighs.
I would I were an armed knight,
Far-famed ...

What are the falling rills, the pendant shades,
The morning bowers, the evening colonnades,
But soft recesses for th' uneasy mind
To sigh unheard in, to the passing wind!
So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part,
Lies down to die (the arrow in his heart);
There hid in shades, and wasting day by day,
Inly he bleeds, and pants his soul away.

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
From Mad to Saco river,
For patriarchs of the primal wood
We sought with vain endeavor.

And then we said: “The giants old
Are lost beyond retrieval;
This pygmy growth the axe has spared
Is not the wood primeval.

“Look where we will o’er vale and hill,
How idle are our searches
For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks,
Centennial pines and birches.

“Their tortured limbs the axe and saw
Have changed to beams and trestles;
They rest in walls, they float on seas,
They rot in sunken vessels.

“This shorn and wasted mountain land
Of underbrush and boulder,
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
Must live a century older.”

At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,

Outside the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
The summer side:
"Shut out the flower-time,
Sunbeam and shower-time;
Make way for our time,"
Wild winds have cried.
Green once and cheery,
The woods, worn weary,
Sigh as the dreary
Weak sun goes home:
A great wind grapples
The wave, and dapples
The dead green floor of the sea with foam.

Through fell and moorland,
And salt-sea foreland,
Our noisy norland
Resounds and rings;
Waste waves thereunder
Are blown in sunder,
And winds make thunder
With cloudwide wings;
Sea-drift makes dimmer
The beacon's glimmer;
Nor sail nor swimmer
Can try the tides;
And snowdrifts thicken
Where, when leaves quicken,
Under the heather the sundew hide...

All are not ill plots that do sometimes fail;
Nor those false vows which ofttimes don't prevail.

Evening has thrown her hushing garment round
This little world; no harsh or jarring sound
Disturbs my reverie. The room is dark,
And kneeling at the window I can mark
Each light and shadow of the scene below.
The placid glistening pools, the streams that flow
Through the red earth, left by the hurrying tide;
The ridge of mountain on the farther side
Shewing more black for many twinkling lights
That come and go about the gathering heights.
Below me lie great wharves, dreary and dim,
And lumber houses crowding close and grim
Like giant shadowed guardians of the port,
With towering chimneys outlined tall and swart
Against the silver pools. Two figures pace
The wharf in ghostly silence, face from face.
O'er the black line of mountain, silver-clear
In faint ro...

        A Choir of bright beauties in spring did appear,
        To choose a May-lady to govern the year;
        All the nymphs were in white, and the shepherds in green;
        The garland was given, and Phyllis was queen:
        But Phyllis refused it, and sighing did say,
        I'll not wear a garland while Pan is away.

        While Pan and fair Syrinx are fled from our shore,
        The Graces are banish'd, and Love is no more:
        The soft god of pleasure, that warm'd our desires,
        Has broken his bow, and extinguish'd his fires;
        And vows that himself and his mother will mourn,
        Till Pan and fair Syrinx in triumph return.

        Forbear your addresses, and court us no more;
        For we will perform what the Deity swore:

Ah, London! London! our delight,
Great flower that opens but at night,
Great City of the Midnight Sun,
Whose day begins when day is done.

Lamp after lamp against the sky
Opens a sudden beaming eye,
Leaping alight on either hand,
The iron lilies of the Strand.

Like dragonflies, the hansoms hover,
With jewelled eyes, to catch the lover;
The streets are full of lights and loves,
Soft gowns, and flutter of soiled doves.

The human moths about the light
Dash and cling close in dazed delight,
And burn and laugh, the world and wife,
For this is London, this is life!

Upon thy petals butterflies,
But at thy root, some say, there lies
A world of weeping trodden things,
Poor worms that have not eyes or wings.

From out corr...

Farewell, for the bark has her breast to the tide,
And the rough arms of Ocean are stretched for his bride;
The winds from the mountain stream over the bay;
One clasp of the hand, then away and away!

I see the tall mast as it rocks by the shore;
The sun is declining, I see it once more;
To-day like the blade in a thick-waving field,
To-morrow the spike on a Highlander's shield.

Alone, while the cloud pours its treacherous breath,
With the blue lips all round her whose kisses are death;
Ah, think not the breeze that is urging her sail
Has left her unaided to strive with the gale.

There are hopes that play round her, like fires on the mast,
That will light the dark hour till its danger has past;
There are prayers that will plead with the storm when it ra...

(Horace speaking.)

You've read, sir, in poetic strain,
How Varus and the Mantuan swain
Have on my birth-day been invited,
(But I was forced in verse to write it,)
Upon a plain repast to dine,
And taste my old Campanian wine;
But I, who all punctilios hate,
Though long familiar with the great,
Nor glory in my reputation,
Am come without an invitation;
And, though I'm used to right Falernian,
I'll deign for once to taste Iërnian;
But fearing that you might dispute
(Had I put on my common suit)
My breeding and my politesse,
I visit in my birth-day dress:
My coat of purest Turkey red,
With gold embroidery richly spread;
To which I've sure as good pretensions,
As Irish lords who starve on pensions.
What though proud ministers of state...

Excerpt from "Gertrude Of Wyoming"


Apart there was a deep untrodden grot,
Where oft the reading hours sweet Gertrude wore;
Tradition had not named its lonely spot;
But here (methinks) might India's sons explore
Their father's dust, or lift, perchance of yore,
Their voice to the great Spirit: rocks sublime
To human art a sportive semblance bore,
And yellow lichens coloured all the clime,
Like moonlight battlements, and towers decayed by time.

But high in amphitheatre above,
Gay tinted woods their massy foliage threw:
Breathed but an air of heaven, and all the grove
As if instinct with living spirit grew,
Rolling its verdant gulfs of every hue;
And now suspended was the pleasing din,
Now from a murmur faint it swelled anew,
Like the...

Into the rock the road is cut full deep,
    At its low ledges village children play,
From its high rifts fountains of leafage weep,
        And silvery birches sway.

The boldest climbers have its face forsworn,
    Sheer as a wall it doth all daring flout;
But benchlike at its base, and weather-worn,
        A narrow ledge leans out.

There do they set forth feasts in dishes rude
    Wrought of the rush - wild strawberries on the bed
Left into August, apples brown and crude,
        Cress from the cold well-head.

Shy gamesome girls, small daring imps of boys,
    But gentle, almost silent at their play -
Their fledgling daws, for food, make far more noise
        Ranged on the ledge than they.

The children and the purple martins share

Greta, what fearful listening! when huge stones
Rumble along thy bed, block after block:
Or, whirling with reiterated shock,
Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans:
But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans
Heard on his rueful margin) thence wert named
The Mourner, thy true nature was defamed,
And the habitual murmur that atones
For thy worst rage, forgotten. Oft as Spring
Decks, on thy sinuous banks, her thousand thrones
Seats of glad instinct and love's caroling,
The concert, for the happy, then may vie
With liveliest peals of birth-day harmony:
To a grieved heart, the notes are benisons.

    I

    A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams,
    Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth
    Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth
    Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams
    Thine ancient pathway of the suns,
    Whose flame is part of thee;
    And deeps outreach immutably
    Whose largeness runs
    Through all thy spirit's mystery.
    Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze
    Of stars where through thou camest in old days;
    Pierce without fear each vast
    Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past.
    A hand strikes off the chains of Time,
    A hand swings back the door of years;
    Now fall earth's bonds of gladness and of tears,
    And opens the strait dream to space sublime."


    II...

Strike home, strong-hearted man! Down to the root
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel.
Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then
Put nerve into thy task. Let other men
Plant, as they may, that better tree whose fruit
The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal.
Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows
Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand,
On crown or crosier, which shall interpose
Between thee and the weal of Fatherland.
Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all,
Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall
Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk
Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart monk.
Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let us hear
The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear
Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light
Follows thy axe-...

When the bright sun back on his yearly road
    Comes towards us, his great glory seems to me,
As from the sky he pours it all abroad,
    A golden herald, my beloved, of thee.

When from the south the gentle winds do blow,
    Calling the flowers that sleep beneath the earth,
It sounds like sweetest music, that doth go
    Before thy coming, full of love and mirth.

When one by one the violets appear,
    Opening their purple vests so modestly,
To greet the virgin daughter of the year,
    Each seems a fragrant prophecy of thee.

For with the spring thou shalt return again;
    Therefore the wind, the flower, and clear sunshine,
A double worship from my heart obtain,
    A love and welcome not their own, but thine.

    I

    When the clouds hide the sun away
    The tall slate roof is dull and grey,
    And when the rain adown it streams
    'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams.

    When the clouds vanish and the rain
    Stops, and the sun comes out again,
    It shimmers golden in the sun
    Almost too bright to look upon.

    But soon beneath the steady rays
    The roof is dried and reft of blaze,
    'Tis dusty yellow traversed through
    By long thin lines of deepest blue.

    Then at the last, as night draws near,
    The lines grow faint and disappear,
    The roof becomes a purple mist,
    A great square darkening amethyst

    Which sinks into the gathering shade
    Till separate form and colour fade,
    And ...