Betrayal

On receiving a sprig of heather in blossom.



No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns
The moorland flower and peasant!
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!

The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning.

The dews that washed the dust and soil
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky, that flecked the, ground of toil
With golden threads of l...

Oh think not with love's soft token,
Or music my heart to thrill
For its strings its strings are broken,
And the chords would fain be still!

Oh think not to waken the measure
Of joy on a ruined lute
Think not to waken pleasure,
Where grief sits mourning and mute.

The pearls that gleam in the billow,
But darken the gloom of the deep
And laughter plants the pillow
With thorns, where sorrow would sleep.

The gems that gleam on the finger
Of her who is sleeping and cold,
But wring the hearts that linger.
And dream of the love they told.

My bosom is but a grave,
My breast a voiceless choir
Speak not to the echoless cave,
Touch not the broken lyre!

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
Are all but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay
Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine stealing o'er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!

She leant against the armed man,
The statue of the armed knight;
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene'er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story -
An ...

When this, our rose, is faded,
And these, our days, are done,
In lands profoundly shaded
From tempest and from sun:
Ah, once more come together,
Shall we forgive the past,
And safe from worldly weather
Possess our souls at last?

Or in our place of shadows
Shall still we stretch an hand
To green, remembered meadows,
Of that old pleasant land?
And vainly there foregathered,
Shall we regret the sun?
The rose of love, ungathered?
The bay, we have not won?

Ah, child! the world's dark marges
May lead to Nevermore,
The stately funeral barges
Sail for an unknown shore,
And love we vow to-morrow,
And pride we serve to-day:
What if they both should borrow
Sad hues of yesterday?

Our pride! Ah, should we miss it,

1.
Oh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes,
Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,
In which the warm current of love never freezes,
As it rises unmingled with selfishness there,
Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care,
Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise,
Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.

2.
Or where the stern warrior, his country defending,
Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour,
Or o'er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending,
Where patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore
Plants Liberty's flag on the slave-peopled shore,
With victory's cry, with the shout of the free,
Let it fly, taintless Spirit, to mingle with thee.

3.
For I found the pure gem, when the daybeam returning,<...

I know how well Love shoots, how swift his flight,
How now by force and now by stealth he steals,
How he will threaten now, anon will smite,
And how unstable are his chariot wheels.
How doubtful are his hopes, how sure his pain,
And how his faithful promise he repeals.
How in one's marrow, in one's vital vein,
His smouldering fire quickens a hidden wound,
Where death is manifest, destruction plain.
In sum, how erring, fickle and unsound,
How timid and how bold are lovers' days,
Where with scant sweetness bitter draughts abound.
I know their songs, their sighs, their usual ways,
Their broken speech, their sudden silences.
Their passing laughter and their grief that stays,
I know how mixed with gall their honey is.

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briars if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless
Night and day.

The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
That crawls b...

I.

    I dream'd I lay where flowers were springing
        Gaily in the sunny beam;
    List'ning to the wild birds singing,
        By a falling crystal stream:
    Straight the sky grew black and daring;
        Thro' the woods the whirlwinds rave;
    Trees with aged arms were warring.
        O'er the swelling drumlie wave.

II.

    Such was my life's deceitful morning,
        Such the pleasure I enjoy'd:
    But lang or noon, loud tempests storming,
        A' my flowery bliss destroy'd.
    Tho' fickle fortune has deceiv'd me,
        She promis'd fair, and perform'd but ill;
    Of mony a joy and hope bereav'd me,
        I bear a heart shall support me still.

Thanks to Memory's daughters nine,
Animals have graced my line:
Higher heroes in my story
Might have won me less of glory.
Wolves, in language of the sky,
Talk with dogs throughout my verse;
Beasts with others shrewdly vie,
Representing characters;
Fools in furs not second-hand,
Sages, hoof'd or feather'd, stand:
Fewer truly are the latter,
More the former - ay, and fatter.
Flourish also in my scene
Tyrants, villains, mountebanks,
Beasts incapable of thanks,
Beasts of rash and reckless pranks,
Beasts of sly and flattering mien;
Troops of liars, too, I ween.
As to men, of every age,
All are liars, saith the sage.
Had he writ but of the low,
One could hardly think it so;
But that human mortals, all,
Lie like serpents, great and...

Dear friend, I pray thee, if thou wouldst be proving
    Thy strong regard for me,
Make me no vows.    Lip-service is not loving;
    Let thy faith speak for thee.

Swear not to me that nothing can divide us -
    So little such oaths mean.
But when distrust and envy creep beside us
    Let them not come between.

Say not to me the depths of thy devotion
    Are deeper than the sea;
But watch, lest doubt or some unkind emotion
    Embitter them for me.

Vow not to love me ever and for ever,
    Words are such idle things;
But when we differ in opinions, never
    Hurt me by little stings.

I'm sick of words:    they are so lightly spoken,
    And spoken, are but air.
I'd rather feel thy trust in me unbroken
    Than list thy ...

1.
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.

2.
I see the Deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone, -
The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

3.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace wit...

    A well-thumbed book
    like a well-thumbed life,
    "whilst you walk this earth"
    yet nothing is "afoot",
    as so many small boys
    throwing stones through the funeral parlour
    glass door.

    A cake-walk? Being alive and interacting
    across the face of the multitude is terrible
    algebra running into unfathomable sums.
    "Doing your sums", my grade school teacher
    used to say and I still am. Whippersnapper,
    learning lessons in a strange stamina
    sort of way.

    One of the multitude died last night &
    is now "resting" in a large, Victorian parlour.
    Even the walls grimace. I went by, caught a peek
    at the assemblage chasing thru rain to see his
    last hurrah. Look, "parlour" can be deadly s...

Ye little flowrets, wild an free,
Yo're welcome, aye as onny!
Ther's but few seets 'at meet mi ee
'At ivver seem as bonny.
Th' furst gift 'at Lizzie gave to me,
Wor a bunch o' bloomin heather,
Shoo pluckt it off o'th' edge o'th' lea,
Whear we'd been set together.

An when shoo put it i' mi hand,
A silent tear wor wellin
Within her ee; - it fell to th' graand,
A doleful stooary tellin.
"It is a little gift," shoo sed,
"An sooin will fade an wither,
Yet, still, befooar its bloom is shed,
We two mun pairt for ivver."

I tried to cheer her trubbled mind,
Wi' tender words endearin;
An raand her neck mi arms entwined,
But grief her breast wor tearin.
"Why should mi parents sell for gold,
Ther dowter's life-long pleasure?
Noa c...

If any man drew near
When I was young,
I thought, ‘He holds her dear,’
And shook with hate and fear.
But oh, ’twas bitter wrong
If he could pass her by
With an indifferent eye.

Whereon I wrote and wrought,
And now, being gray,
I dream that I have brought
To such a pitch my thought
That coming time can say,
‘He shadowed in a glass
What thing her body was.’

For she had fiery blood
When I was young,
And trod so sweetly proud
As ’twere upon a cloud,
A woman Homer sung,
That life and letters seem
But an heroic dream.

When you are standing at your hero's grave,
Or near some homeless village where he died,
Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride,
The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.

Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done:
And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.
But in that Golgotha perhaps you'll find
The mothers of the men who killed your son.

November, 1918.

Fallen, and diffused into a shapeless heap,
Or quietly self-buried in earth's mould,
Is that embattled House, whose massy Keep,
Flung from yon cliff a shadow large and cold.
There dwelt the gay, the bountiful, the bold;
Till nightly lamentations, like the sweep
Of winds, though winds were silent, struck a deep
And lasting terror through that ancient Hold.
Its line of Warriors fled; they shrunk when tried
By ghostly power: but Time's unsparing hand
Hath plucked such foes, like weeds, from out the land;
And now, if men with men in peace abide,
All other strength the weakest may withstand,
All worse assaults may safely be defied.

Another hand is beckoning us,
Another call is given;
And glows once more with Angel-steps
The path which reaches Heaven.

Our young and gentle friend, whose smile
Made brighter summer hours,
Amid the frosts of autumn time
Has left us with the flowers.

No paling of the cheek of bloom
Forewarned us of decay;
No shadow from the Silent Land
Fell round our sister's way.

The light of her young life went down,
As sinks behind the hill
The glory of a setting star,
Clear, suddenly, and still.

As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed
Eternal as the sky;
And like the brook's low song, her voice,
A sound which could not die.

And half we deemed she needed not
The changing of her sphere,
To give to Heaven a Shining O...

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?

"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:

"And all the phantom, Nature, stands--
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,--
A hollow form with empty hands."

And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?