Betrayal

Oh, what would you have, you splendid sun,
    With your restless eyes of fire?
And why do you lean o'er the lilies pale?
    What more can your heart desire?

You've crimsoned the rays in the heart of the rose,
    You've drunk up the dewdrops all;
And down in the meadows your golden light
    Has gilded the daisies tall.

The thirsty flowers that grow on the hill
    Have given their lives to you;
And what do you care, you restless sun,
    As you sail through your seas of blue?

Your rays are so warm, like the glances of love,
    The lily is mad with delight;
And whispers her secret with silent joy,
    As she kisses my face in the night.

What more can you want, O eager sun?
    I've given my all to you;
I've counted my treas...

What a pretty tale you told me
Once upon a time
Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)
Was it prose or was it rhyme,
Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,
While your shoulder propped my head.

Anyhow there's no forgetting
This much if no more,
That a poet (pray, no petting!)
Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,
Went where suchlike used to go,
Singing for a prize, you know.

Well, he had to sing, nor merely
Sing but play the lyre;
Playing was important clearly
Quite as singing: I desire,
Sir, you keep the fact in mind
For a purpose that's behind.

There stood he, while deep attention
Held the judges round,
Judges able, I should mention,
To detect the slightest sound
Sung or played amiss: such ears
Had old judges, it app...

If Thought can reach to Heaven,
On Heaven let it dwell,
For fear the Thought be given
Like power to reach to Hell.
For fear the desolation
And darkness of thy mind
Perplex an habitation
Which thou hast left behind.

Let nothing linger after,
No whimpering gost remain,
In wall, or beam, or rafter,
Of any hate or pain.
Cleans and call home thy spirit,
Deny her leave to cast,
On aught thy heirs inherit,
The shadow of her past.

For think, in all thy sadness,
What road our griefs may take;
Whose brain reflect our madness,
Or whom our terrors shake:
For think, lest any languish
By cause of thy distress,
The arrows of our anguish
Fly farther than we guess.

Our lives, our tears, as water,
Are spilled upon t...

What if I bade you leave
The cavern of the mind?
There's better exercise
In the sunlight and wind.
I never bade you go
To Moscow or to Rome.
Renounce that drudgery,
Call the Muses home.
Seek those images
That constitute the wild,
The lion and the virgin,
The harlot and the child
Find in middle air
An eagle on the wing,
Recognise the five
That make the Muses sing.

Shun not this Rite, neglected, yea abhorred,
By some of unreflecting mind, as calling
Man to curse man, (thought monstrous and appalling.)
Go thou and hear the threatenings of the Lord;
Listening within his Temple see his sword
Unsheathed in wrath to strike the offender's head,
Thy own, if sorrow for thy sin be dead,
Guilt unrepented, pardon unimplored.
Two aspects bears Truth needful for salvation;
Who knows not 'that?' yet would this delicate age
Look only on the Gospel's brighter page:
Let light and dark duly our thoughts employ;
So shall the fearful words of Commination
Yield timely fruit of peace and love and joy.

The summer sun is sinking low;
Only the tree-tops redden and glow:
Only the weathercock on the spire
Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire;
    All is in shadow below.

O beautiful, awful summer day,
What hast thou given, what taken away?
Life and death, and love and hate,
Homes made happy or desolate,
    Hearts made sad or gay!

On the road of life one mile-stone more!
In the book of life one leaf turned o'er!
Like a red seal is the setting sun
On the good and the evil men have done,--
    Naught can to-day restore!

Death in his palace holds his court,
His messengers move to and fro,
Each of his mission makes report,
And takes the royal orders,--Lo,
Some slow before his throne appear
And humbly in the Presence kneel:
"Why hath the Prince not been brought here?
The hour is past; nor is appeal
Allowed against foregone decree;
There is the mandate with the seal!
How comes it ye return to me
Without him? Shame upon your zeal!"

"O King, whom all men fear,--he lies
Deep in the dark Medhya wood,
We fled from thence in wild surprise,
And left him in that solitude.
We dared not touch him, for there sits,
Beside him, lighting all the place,
A woman fair, whose brow permits
In its austerity of grace
And purity,--no creatures foul
As we seemed, by her l...

The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain . . .
It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls
Down golden-windowed walls.
We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,
We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
We shall lie down again.

The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn,
Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow . . .
One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
But whether he lives or dies we do not know.

One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
T...

(March, 1862.)


Your honest heart of duty, Worden,
So helped you that in fame you dwell;
You bore the first iron battle's burden
Sealed as in a diving-bell.
Alcides, groping into haunted hell
To bring forth King Admetus' bride,
Braved naught more vaguely direful and untried.
What poet shall uplift his charm,
Bold Sailor, to your height of daring,
And interblend therewith the calm,
And build a goodly style upon your bearing.

Escaped the gale of outer ocean -
Cribbed in a craft which like a log
Was washed by every billow's motion -
By night you heard of Og
The huge; nor felt your courage clog
At tokens of his onset grim:
You marked the sunk ship's flag-staff slim,
Lit by her burning sister's heart;
You marked, and mused: "Day...

The dreams of my heart and my mind pass,
Nothing stays with me long,
But I have had from a child
The deep solace of song;

If that should ever leave me,
Let me find death and stay
With things whose tunes are played out and forgotten
Like the rain of yesterday.

One moment past our bodies cast
No shadow on the plain;
Now clear and black they stride our track,
And we run home again.
In morning-hush, each rock and bush
Stands hard, and high, and raw:
Then give the Call: "Good rest to all
That keep the Jungle Law!"

Now horn and pelt our peoples melt
In covert to abide;
Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill
Our Jungle Barons glide.
Now, stark and plain, Man's oxen strain,
That draw the new-yoked plough;
Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red
Above the lit talao.

Ho! Get to lair! The sun's aflare
Behind the breathing grass:
And creaking through the young bamboo
The warning whispers pass.
By day made strange, the woods we range
With blinking eyes we scan;
While down the skies ...

My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell;
We may not meet to-morrow; who can tell
What mighty ills befall our little band,
Or what you'll suffer from the white man's hand?
Here is your knife! I thought 'twas sheathed for aye.
No roaming bison calls for it to-day;
No hide of prairie cattle will it maim;
The plains are bare, it seeks a nobler game:
'Twill drink the life-blood of a soldier host.
Go; rise and strike, no matter what the cost.
Yet stay. Revolt not at the Union Jack,
Nor raise Thy hand against this stripling pack
Of white-faced warriors, marching West to quell
Our fallen tribe that rises to rebel.
They all are young and beautiful and good;
Curse to the war that drinks their harmless blood.
Curse to the fate that brought them from the East
To ...

Oh, Mary, when distress and anguish came,
And slow disease preyed on thy wasted frame;
When every friend, ev'n like thy bloom, was fled,
And Want bowed low thy unsupported head;
Sure sad Humanity a tear might give,
And Virtue say, Live, beauteous sufferer, live!
But should there one be found, (amidst the few
Who with compassion thy last pangs might view),
One who beheld thy errors with a tear,
To whom the ruins of thy heart were dear,
Who fondly hoped, the ruthful season past,
Thy faded virtues might revive at last;
Should such be found, oh! when he saw thee lie,
Closing on every earthly hope thine eye;
When he beheld despair, with rueful trace,
Mark the strange features of thy altered face;
When he beheld, as painful death drew nigh,
Thy pale, pale cheek...

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Weep on, weep on, your hour is past;
    Your dreams of pride are o'er;
The fatal chain is round you cast,
    And you are men no more.
In vain the hero's heart hath bled;
    The sage's tongue hath warned in vain;--
Oh, Freedom! once thy flame hath fled,
    It never lights again.

Weep on--perhaps in after days,
    They'll learn to love your name;
When many a deed may wake in praise
    That long hath slept in blame.
And when they tread the ruined isle,
    Where rest, at length, the lord and slave,
They'll wondering ask, how hands so vile
    Could conquer hearts so brave?

"'Twas fate," they'll say, "a wayward fate
    "Your web of discord wove;
"And while your tyrants joined in hate,
    "You never joined in love.
"But heart...

In the Capitol is mourning,
    Mourning and woe this day,
For a nation's heart is throbbing--
    A great man has passed away

It was yester'even only
    Rejoicing wild and high,
Waving flags and shouting people
    Proclaimed a victory

For our God had led our armies,
    In the cause of truth and right,
It was, therefore, the brave Southren
    Had bowed to Northern might.

Then flashed o'er the land the tidings,
    The flush of joy to quell,
Fallen is the people's hero,
    As William the Silent fell.

The stealthy step of the panther,
    The tiger's cruel eye;
A flash--and the wail of a nation
    Rang in that terrified cry.

Shame falls on the daring Southren,
    Woe on the Southren land,
The sta...

Like some weak lords neighbord by mighty kings,
To keep themselues and their chief cities free,
Do easily yeeld that all their coasts may be
Ready to store their campes of needfull things;
So Stellas heart, finding what power Loue brings
To keep it selfe in life and liberty,
Doth willing graunt that in the frontiers he
Vse all to helpe his other conquerings.
And thus her heart escapes; but thus her eyes
Serue him with shot, her lips his heralds are,
Her breasts his tents, legs his triumphall car,
Her flesh his food, her skin his armour braue.
And I, but for because my prospect lies
Vpon that coast, am given vp for slaue.

Roses about my way, and roses still!
0, I must pick and have my very fill!
Red for my heart and white upon my hair
And still I shall have roses and to spare!
    My child, I save thee thorns! Dear little friend,
        This is the end!

So long the road, so lone the road and gray,
My bleeding feet must travel many a day!
With not an inn where I may stop and rest,
With not a roof that claims me for its guest!
        Hush! the road vanishes! Yes, yes, poor friend,
            This is the end!

O Lord, let thou thy servant go in peace!
Now I have rounded out life's perfect lease,
Spare me the clouded brain, the dark'ning eye,
Nor let me be a burden ere I die!
        Thou shalt not he! Nay, even now, old friend,
            This ...