Betrayal

The night is young yet; an enchanted night
In early summer: calm and darkly bright.

I love the Night, and every little breeze
She brings, to soothe the sleep of dreaming trees.

Hearst thou the Voices? Sough! Susurrus! Hark!
’Tis Mother Nature whispering in the dark!

Burden of cities, mad turmoil of men,
That vex the daylight, she forgets them then.

Her breasts are bare; Grief gains from them surcease:
She gives her restless sons the milk of Peace.

To sleep she lulls them, drawn from thoughts of pelf
By telling sweet old stories of herself.

.    .    .    .    .

All secrets deep, yea, all I hear and see
Of things mysterious, Night reveals to me.

I know what every flower, with drowsy head
Down-drooping, dreams of, ...

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

And I grew up in patterned tranquility,
In the cool nursery of the young century.
And the voice of man was not dear to me,
But the voice of the wind I could understand.
But best of all the silver willow.
And obligingly, it lived
With me all my life; it's weeping branches
Fanned my insomnia with dreams.
And strange!--I outlived it.
There the stump stands; with strange voices
Other willows are conversing
Under our, under those skies.
And I am silent...As if a brother had died.

Say, will it, when our hairs are grey,
And wintry suns half light the day,
Which cheering hope and strengthening trust
Have left, departed, turned to dust,
Say, will it soothe lone years to extract
From fitful shows with sense exact
Their sad residuum, small, of fact?
Will trembling nerves their solace find
In plain conclusions of the mind?
Or errant fancies fond, that still
To fretful motions prompt the will,
Repose upon effect and cause,
And action of unvarying laws,
And human life’s familiar doom,
And on the all-concluding tomb.

Or were it to our kind and race,
And our instructed selves, disgrace
To wander then once more in you,
Green fields, beneath the pleasant blue;
To dream as we were used to dream,
And let things be whate’er t...

’Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain
Oh might our marges meet again!

Who order’d, that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?
Who rende...

The Text is from Percy's Reliques (vol. ii., 1765: vol. iii., 1767). In the latter edition he also gives the English version of the ballad earlier in the same volume.

The Story.--This ballad, as it is one of the most beautiful, is also one of the most popular. It should be compared with Fair Margaret and Sweet William, in which the forlorn maid dies of grief, not by the hand of her rival.

    A series of Norse ballads tell much the same tale, but in none is the 'friends' will' a crucial point. Chansons from Burgundy, Bretagne, Provence, and northern Italy, faintly echo the story.

    Lord Thomas his mither says that Fair Annet has no 'gowd and gear'; yet later on we find that Annet's father can provide her with a horse shod with silver and gold, and four-and-twenty silver bells in his mane; s...

Once more, then, we meet
In the circles of yore;
Let our song be as sweet
In its wreaths as before,
Who claims the first place
In the tribute of song?
The God to whose grace
All our pleasures belong.
Though Ceres may spread
All her gifts on the shrine,
Though the glass may be red
With the blush of the vine,
What boots if the while
Fall no spark on the hearth;
If the heart do not smile
With the instinct of mirth?
From the clouds, from God's breast
Must our happiness fall,
'Mid the blessed, most blest
Is the moment of all!
Since creation began
All that mortals have wrought,
All that's godlike in man
Comes the flash of a thought!
For ages the stone
In the quarry may lurk,
An instant alone
Can suffice to the w...

Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me.
One or two women (God bless them!) have loved me.
I have worked and dreamed, and I've talked at will.
Of art and drink I have had my fill.
I've comforted here, and I've succoured there.
I've faced my foes, and I've backed my friends.
I've blundered, and sometimes made amends.
I have prayed for light, and I've known despair.
Now I look before, as I look behind,
Come storm, come shine, whatever befall,
With a grateful heart and a constant mind,
For the end I know is the best of all.

1888-1889

(E. L G.)



Beneath a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
From the files of formal houses,
By the bough the firstling browses,
Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
No man barters, no man sells
Where she dwells.

Upon that fabric fair
"Here is she!"
Seems written everywhere
Unto me.
But to friends and nodding neighbours,
Fellow-wights in lot and labours,
Who descry the times as I,
No such lucid legend tells
Where she dwells.

Should I lapse to what I was
Ere we met;
(Such can not be, but because
Some forget
Let me feign it) none would notice
That where she I know by rote is
Spread a strange and withering change,
Like a drying of the wells
Where s...

Tall was young Wanâta, stronger than Heyóka's [16] giant form,
Laughed at flood and fire and hunger, faced the fiercest winter storm.
When Wakinyan [32] flashed and thundered, when Unktéhee raved and roared,
All but brave Wanâta wondered, and the gods with fear implored.
When the war-whoop shrill resounded, calling friends to meet the foe,
From the teepee swift he bounded, armed with polished lance and bow.
In the battle's din and clangor fast his fatal arrows flew,
Flashed his fiery eyes with anger, many a stealthy foe he slew.
Hunter swift was he and cunning, caught the beaver, slew the bear,
Overtook the roebuck running, dragged the panther from his lair.
Loved was he by many a maiden; many a dark eye glanced in vain;
Many a heart w...

"Woe to you, Prelates! rioting in ease
"And cumbrous wealth the shame of your estate;
"You, on whose progress dazzling trains await
"Of pompous horses; whom vain titles please;
"Who will be served by others on their knees,
"Yet will yourselves to God no service pay;
"Pastors who neither take nor point the way
"To Heaven; for, either lost in vanities
"Ye have no skill to teach, or if ye know
"And speak the word" Alas! of fearful things
'Tis the most fearful when the people's eye
Abuse hath cleared from vain imaginings;
And taught the general voice to prophesy
Of Justice armed, and Pride to be laid low.

However skilled and strong art thou, my foe,
However fierce is thy relentless hate,
Though firm thy hand, and strong thy aim, and straight
Thy poisoned arrow leaves the bended bow,

To pierce the target of my heart, ah! know
    I am the master yet of my own fate.
    Thou canst not rob me of my best estate,
Though fortune, fame, and friends, yea, love shall go.

Not to the dust shall my true self be hurled,
    Nor shall I meet thy worst assaults dismayed;
    When all things in the balance are well weighed,
There is but one great danger in the world -
    THOU CANST NOT FORCE MY SOUL TO WISH THEE ILL,
    That is the only evil that can kill.

I
Good night, we say, when comes the time to win
The daily death divine that shuts up sight,
Sleep, that assures for all who dwell therein
Good night.
The shadow shed round those we love shines bright
As love's own face, when death, sleep's gentler twin,
From them divides us even as night from light.
Shall friends born lower in life, though pure of sin,
Though clothed with love and faith to usward plight,
Perish and pass unbidden of us, their kin,
Good night?

II
To die a dog's death once was held for shame.
Not all men so beloved and mourned shall lie
As many of these, whose time untimely came
To die.
His years were full: his years were joyous: why
Must love be sorrow, when his gracious name
Recalls his lovely life of limb and eye?
If...

Serene descent, as a red leaf's descending
When there is neither wind nor noise of rain,
But only autum air and the unending
Drawing of all things to the earth again.

So be it, let the snow fall deep and cover
All that was drunken once with light and air.
The earth will not regret her tireless lover,
Nor he awake to know she does not care.

What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar,
But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter?

You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe,
As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby,
You will find such flame at the wave's weedy ebb
As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother's web,

But there comes to birth no common spawn
From the love of a priest for a leprechaun,
And you never have seen and you never will see
Such things as the t...

Deep in the bosom of a wood,
Out of the road, a Temple[4] stood:
Ancient, and much the worse for wear,
It call'd aloud for quick repair,
And, tottering from side to side,
Menaced destruction far and wide;
Nor able seem'd, unless made stronger,
To hold out four or five years longer.
Four hundred pillars, from the ground
Rising in order, most unsound,
Some rotten to the heart, aloof
Seem'd to support the tottering roof,
But, to inspection nearer laid,
Instead of giving, wanted aid.
The structure, rare and curious, made
By men most famous in their trade,
A work of years, admired by all,
Was suffer'd into dust to fall;
Or, just to make it hang together,
And keep off the effects of weather,
Was patch'd and patch'd from time to time

Some men there are who stand so straight,
So equipoised, that others' fate
Seems to depend on their behest;
And useless all our every quest
To gain perfection or renown,
Unless we touch the flowing gown
Of these high-priests, whose shadows fall
Within themselves, if fall at all.

Others are not as straight as these,
But more like rough and gnarled trees;
But little beauty they display;
Shadows they cast across the way;
And from them men with scorning turn,
Or, if they speak, their accents burn
Like capsicum on chafed skin,
And leave a smarting wound within.

Once noble men, when turned aside
By fleshly lust or sinful pride,
Each one becomes a broken bell
On which the angry fiends of hell
Ring out their discord, harsh and loud,

In martiall sports I had my cunning tride,
And yet to breake more staues did mee addresse,
While, with the peoples shouts, I must confesse,
Youth, lucke, and praise euen fil'd my veines with pride;
When Cupid, hauing me, his slaue, descride
In Marses livery prauncing in the presse,
What now, Sir Foole! said he, (I would no lesse:)
Looke here, I say! I look'd, and Stella spide,
Who, hard by, made a window send forth light.
My heart then quak'd, then dazled were mine eyes,
One hand forgat to rule, th'other to fight,
Nor trumpets sound I heard, nor friendly cries:
My foe came on, and beate the air for me,
Till that her blush taught me my shame to see.