Betrayal

    Jacky, come give me thy fiddle
        If ever thou mean to thrive;
    Nay, I'll not give my fiddle,
        To any man alive.

    If I should give my fiddle,
        They'll think that I'm gone mad,
    For many a joyful day
        My fiddle and I have had.

Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
Each flash, and spouting crash, - each instant lit
When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders,
"Could anything be worse than this!" - he wonders,
Remembering how he saw those Germans run,
Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees:
Green-faced, they dodged and darted: there was one
Livid with terror, clutching at his knees...
Our chaps were sticking 'em like pigs... "O hell!"
He thought - "there's things in war one dare not tell
Poor father sitting safe at home, who reads
Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds."

I. I honour Nature, holding it unjust
To look with jealousy on her designs;
With every passing year more fast she twines
About my heart; with her mysterious dust
Claim I a fellowship not less august
Although she works before me and combines
Her changing forms, wherever the sun shines
Spreading a leafy volume on the crust
Of the old world; and man himself likewise
Is of her making: wherefore then divorce
What God hath joined thus, and rend by force
Spirit away from substance, bursting ties
By which in one great bond of unity
God hath together bound all things that be?

II. And in these lines my purpose is to show
That He who left the Father, though he came
Not with art-splendour or the earthly flame
Of genius, yet in that he did bestow
His own tr...

Love brought me to a silent grove
And show'd me there a tree,
Where some had hang'd themselves for love,
And gave a twist to me.

The halter was of silk and gold,
That he reach'd forth unto me;
No otherwise than if he would
By dainty things undo me.

He bade me then that necklace use;
And told me, too, he maketh
A glorious end by such a noose,
His death for love that taketh.

'Twas but a dream; but had I been
There really alone,
My desp'rate fears in love had seen
Mine execution.

Could this early bliss but rest

Constant for one single hour!
But e'en now the humid West

Scatters many a vernal shower.
Should the verdure give me joy?

'Tis to it I owe the shade;
Soon will storms its bloom destroy,

Soon will Autumn bid it fade.

Eagerly thy portion seize,

If thou wouldst possess the fruit!
Fast begin to ripen these,

And the rest already shoot.
With each heavy storm of rain

Change comes o'er thy valley fair;
Once, alas! but not again

Can the same stream hold thee e'er.

And thyself, what erst at least

Firm as rocks appear'd to rise,
Walls and palaces thou seest

But with ever-changing eyes.
Fled for ever now the lip

That with kisses used to glo...

        [An egg.]

    In marble walls as white as milk,
    Lined with a skin as soft as silk;
    Within a fountain crystal clear,
    A golden apple doth appear.
    No doors there are to this strong-hold.
    Yet things break in and steal the gold.

                    'It is silly sooth,
        And dallies with the innocence of love,
        Like the old age.'

        --Twelfth Night, II. 4.


The Text.--This ballad, concluding a small class of three--Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, and Fair Margaret and Sweet William being the other two--is distinguished by the fact that the lady dies of hope deferred. It is a foolish ballad, at the opposite pole to Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, and is pre-eminently one of the class meant only to be sung, with an effective burden. The text given here, therefore, is that of a broadside of the year 1846.

The Story in outline is extremely popular in German and Scandinavian literature. Of the former the commonest is Der Ritter und die Maid, also found north of Germany; twenty-...

In St. Luke's Gospel we are told
How Peter in the days of old
        Was sifted;
And now, though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene
        Are shifted.

Satan desires us, great and small,
As wheat to sift us, and we all
        Are tempted;
Not one, however rich or great,
Is by his station or estate
        Exempted.

No house so safely guarded is
But he, by some device of his,
        Can enter;
No heart hath armor so complete
But he can pierce with arrows fleet
        Its centre.

For all at last the cock will crow,
Who hear the warning voice, but go
        Unheeding,
Till thrice and more they have denied
The Man of Sorrows, crucified
        And bleeding.

One look of that pa...

My future will not copy fair my past
On any leaf but Heaven's. Be fully done,
Supernal Will! I would not fain be one
Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast
Upon the fulness of the heart, at last
Saith no grace after meat. My wine hath run
Indeed out of my cup, and there is none
To gather up the bread of my repast
Scattered and trampled! Yet I find some good
In earth's green herbs, and streams that bubble up
Clear from the darkling ground, content until
I sit with angels before better food.
Dear Christ! when thy new vintage fills my cup,
This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill.

Now o'er the landscape crowd the deepening shades,
And the shut lily cradles not the bee;
The red deer couches in the forest glades,
And faint the echoes of the slumberous sea:
And ere I rest, one prayer I'll breathe for thee,
The sweet Egeria of my lonely dreams:
Lady, forgive, that ever upon me
Thoughts of thee linger, as the soft starbeams
Linger on Merlin's rock, or dark Sabrina's streams.

On gray Pilatus once we loved to stray,
And watch far off the glimmering roselight break
O'er the dim mountain-peaks, ere yet one ray
Pierced the deep bosom of the mist-clad lake.
Oh! who felt not new life within him wake,
And his pulse quicken, and his spirit burn -
(Save one we wot of, whom the cold DID make
Feel "shooting pains in every joint in turn,")
Whe...

’Tis midnight o’er the dim mere’s lonely bosom,
Dark, dusky, windy midnight: swift are driven
The swelling vapours onward: every blossom
Bathes its bright petals in the tears of heaven.
Imperfect, half-seen objects meet the sight,
The other half our fancy must pourtray;
A wan, dull, lengthen’d sheet of swimming light
Lies the broad lake: the moon conceals her ray,
Sketch’d faintly by a pale and lurid gleam
Shot thro’ the glimmering clouds: the lovely planet
Is shrouded in obscurity; the scream
Of owl is silenc’d; and the rocks of granite
Rise tall and drearily, while damp and dank
Hang the thick willows on the reedy bank.
Beneath, the gurgling eddies slowly creep,
Blacken’d by foliage; and the glutting wave,
That saps eternally the cold grey steep,
Sounds...

It was up in the morn we rose betimes
From the hall-floor hard by the row of limes.

It was but John the Red and I,
And we were the brethren of Gregory;

And Gregory the Wright was one
Of the valiant men beneath the sun,

And what he bade us that we did
For ne'er he kept his counsel hid.

So out we went, and the clattering latch
Woke up the swallows under the thatch.

It was dark in the porch, but our scythes we felt,
And thrust the whetstone under the belt.

Through the cold garden boughs we went
Where the tumbling roses shed their scent.

Then out a-gates and away we strode
O'er the dewy straws on the dusty road,

And there was the mead by the town-reeve's close
Where the hedge was sweet with the wilding rose.

Come out and walk. The last few drops of light
Drain silently out of the cloudy blue;
The trees are full of the dark-stooping night,
The fields are wet with dew.

All's quiet in the wood but, far away,
Down the hillside and out across the plain,
Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way,
The softly panting train.

Come through the clearing. Hardly now we see
The flowers, save dark or light against the grass,
Or glimmering silver on a scented tree
That trembles as we pass.

Hark now! So far, so far ... that distant song ...
Move not the rustling grasses with your feet.
The dusk is full of sounds, that all along
The muttering boughs repeat.

So far, so faint, we lift our heads in doubt.
Wind, or the blood that beats within our e...

Letters, letters, letters, letters!
Some that please and some that bore,
Some that threaten prison fetters
(Metaphorically, fetters
Such as bind insolvent debtors)
Invitations by the score.

One from COGSON, WILES, and RAILER,
My attorneys, off the Strand;
One from COPPERBLOCK, my tailor
My unreasonable tailor
One in FLAGG'S disgusting hand.

One from EPHRAIM and MOSES,
Wanting coin without a doubt,
I should like to pull their noses
Their uncompromising noses;
One from ALICE with the roses
Ah, I know what that's about !

Time was when I waited, waited
For the missives that she wrote,
Humble postmen execrated
Loudly, deeply execrated
When I heard I wasn't fated
To be gladdened with a note!

Time was when I'...

"THROUGH me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric mov'd:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.

"All hope abandon ye who enter here."

Such characters in colour dim I mark'd
Over a portal's lofty arch inscrib'd:
Whereat I thus: "Master, these words import
Hard meaning."    He as one prepar'd replied:
"Here thou must all distrust behind thee leave;
Here be vile fear extinguish'd. We are come
Where I have told thee we shall see the souls
To misery doom'd, who intellectual good
Have lost."    And when his hand he had stretch'd ...

Hereto I come to interview a ghost;
    Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?
Up the cliff, down, till I'm lonely, lost,
    And the unseen waters' ejaculations awe me.
Where you will next be there's no knowing,
    Facing round about me everywhere,
    With your nut-coloured hair,
And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.

Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;
    Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;
What have you now found to say of our past -
    Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?
Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?
    Things were not lastly as firstly well
    With us twain, you tell?
But all's closed now, despite Time's derision.

I see what you are doing: ...

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

ROME.

In an old book I found her face
    Writ by a dead man long ago -
I found, and then I lost the place;
    So nothing but her face I know,
    And her soft name writ fair below.

Even if she lived I cannot learn,
    Or but a dead man's dream she were;
Page after yellow page I turn,
    But cannot come again to her,
    Although I know she must be there.

On other books of other men,
    Far in the night, year-long, I pore,
Hoping to find her face again,
    Too fair a face to see no more -
    And 'twas so soft a name she bore.

Sometimes I think the book was Youth,
    And the dead man that wrote it I,
The face was Beauty, the name Truth -
    And thus, with an unseeing eye,
    I pass the long-sought image by.