Betrayal

    Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,
    Your love was not all in vain.
    I owe whatever I was in life
    To your hope that would not give me up,
    To your love that saw me still as good.
    Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story.
    I pass the effect of my father and mother;
    The milliner's daughter made me trouble
    And out I went in the world,
    Where I passed through every peril known
    Of wine and women and joy of life.
    One night, in a room in the Rue de Rivoli,
    I was drinking wine with a black-eyed cocotte,
    And the tears swam into my eyes.
    She though they were amorous tears and smiled
    For thought of her conquest over me.
    But my soul was three thousand miles away,
    In the days when you...

I.

O what memories sweet entwine
Around each word and faded line!
Yellow and dim with the touch of years,
And soiled with the marks of tears--
A sacred treasure of the heart
Which death alone can from him part--
A letter--cherished as no other--
And ending with the name of--Mother!


II.

Writ it was to a wayward boy,
When life to him seemed full of joy--
Pleading with him so to live
That he her heart no grief would give--
That after years might ne'er be fraught
With sorrow that himself had wrought:--
"May guardian angels 'round you hover,"
She wrote--and signed the name of--Mother!


III.

The paper has the taint of must--
The hand that traced the lines is dust,
And silvery hair is on the head
...

"O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave there were?

"If your great gaunt eyes so importune
Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,
Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!"

"Why, fool, it is what I would rather see
Than all the living folk there be;
But alas, there is no such joy for me!"

"Ah she was one you loved, no doubt,
Through good and evil, through rain and drought,
And when she passed, all your sun went out?"

"Nay: she was the woman I did not love,
Whom all the others were ranked above,
Whom during her life I thought nothing of."

I.

Small twilight singer
Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger
Of dusk's dim glimmer,
How cool thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer
Vibrate, soft-sighing,
Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying.

I stand and listen,
And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten
With rose and lily,
Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly,
Breathing around its cold and colorless breath,
Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death.

II.

I see thee quaintly
Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly
As thin as spangle
Of cobwebbed rain held up at airy angle;
I hear thy tinkle,
Thy fairy notes, the silvery stillness sprinkle;

Investing wholly
The moonlight with divinest melancholy:
...

THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOWLEDGE, NOR WISDOM, IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER THOU GOEST. - Ecclesiastes.

The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way,
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.

This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unenco...

    If I were a monk, and thou wert a nun,
            Pacing it wearily, wearily,
    Twixt chapel and cell till day were done--
            Wearily, wearily--
    How would it fare with these hearts of ours
    That need the sunshine, and smiles, and flowers?

    To prayer, to prayer, at the matins' call,
            Morning foul or fair!--
    Such prayer as from weary lips might fall--
            Words, but hardly prayer--
    The chapel's roof, like the law in stone,
    Caging the lark that up had flown!

    Thou, in the glory of cloudless noon,
            The God-revealing,
    Turning thy face from the boundless boon--
            Painfully kneeling;
    Or, in brown-shadowy solitude,
    Bending thy head o'er the legend rude!
<...

The Temple Bell was out of tune,
That once out-melodied sun and moon.

Instead of calling folk to prayer
It spread an evil in the air.

Instead of a song, from north to south,
It put a lie in the wind's mouth.

The very palms beneath it died,
So harsh it jarred, so loud it lied.

Then the gods told the blue-robed bonze:
"Your Bell is only wrought of bronze.

Lower it down, cast it again,
Or you shall shake the heavens in vain."

Then, as the mighty cauldron hissed,
Men brought the wealth that no man missed.

Yea, they brought silver, they brought gold,
And melted them into the seething mould.

The miser brought his greening hoard,
And the king cast in his sword.

Yet, when the Bell in the Tem...

What though the Eden morns were sweet with song
Passing all sweetness that our thought can reach;
Crushing its flowers noon's chariot moved along
In brightness far transcending mortal speech;
Yet in the twilight shades did God appear,
Oh welcome shadows so that He draw near.

Prosperity is flushed with Papal ease
And grants indulgences to pride of word,
Robing our soul in pomp and vanities,
Ah! no fit dwelling for our gentle Lord;
Grief rends those draperies of pride and sin,
And so our Lord will deign to enter in.

Then carefully we curb each thought of wrong,
We walk more softly, with more reverent feet -
As in His presence chamber, hush our tongue,
And in the holy quiet, solemn, sweet,
We feel His smile, we hear His voice so low,
So we can bl...

Now the creeping nets of sleep
Stretch about and gather nigh,
And the midnight dim and deep
Like a spirit passes by,
Trailing from her crystal dress
Dreams and silent frostiness.

Yet a moment, ere I be
Tangled in the snares of night,
All the dreamy heart of me
To my Lady takes its flight,
To her chamber where she lies,
Wrapt in midnight phantasies.

Over many a glinting street
And the snow capped roofs of men,
Towers that tremble with the beat
Of the midnight bells, and then,
Where my body may not be,
Stands my spirit holily.

Wake not, Lady, wake not soon:
Through the frosty windows fall
Broken glimmers of the moon
Dimly on the floor and wall;
Wake not, Lady, never care,
'Tis my spirit kneeling there.

I am a pilgrim far from home,
    A wanderer like Mars,
And thought my wanderings ne'er should come,
    So fixed behind the bars!

I left my sunny Southern home
    Beneath the silver stars;
A northward path began to roam,
    Not seeking prison bars.

I sought a higher, holier life,
    Which never virtue mars;
But Fate had spun a net of strife
    For me behind the bars!

My mother's lowly thatched-roofed cot
    My nobler senses jars;
And so I seek to aid her lot,
    But not behind the bars!

'Tis said, forsooth, the poet learns
    Through sufferings and wars
To sing the song which deepest burns
    Behind the prison bars!

Thus I resign myself to Fate,
    Regardless of her scars;
For soon she'll op...

All over the earth like a mantle,
    Golden, and green, and grey,
Crimson, and scarlet, and yellow,
    The Autumn foliage lay; -
The sun of the Indian Summer
    Laughed at the bare old trees
As they shook their leafless branches
    In the soft October breeze.

Gorgeous was every hill-side,
    And gorgeous every nook,
And the dry, old log was gorgeous,
    Spanning the little brook;
Its holiday robes, the forest
    Had suddenly cast to earth,
And, as yet, seemed scarce to miss, them,
    In its plenitude of mirth.

I walked where the leaves the softest,
    The brightest, and goldenest lay,
And I thought of a forest hill-side,
    And an Indian Summer day, -
Of an eager, little child-face
    O'er the fallen leaves that ...

Sybil of months, and worshipper of winds,
I love thee, rude and boisterous as thou art;
And scraps of joy my wandering ever finds
Mid thy uproarious madness--when the start
Of sudden tempests stirs the forest leaves
Into hoarse fury, till the shower set free
Stills the huge swells. Then ebb the mighty heaves,
That sway the forest like a troubled sea.
I love thy wizard noise, and rave in turn
Half-vacant thoughts and rhymes of careless form;
Then hide me from the shower, a short sojourn,
Neath ivied oak; and mutter to the storm,
Wishing its melody belonged to me,
That I might breathe a living song to thee.

“The hills like giants at a hunting lay
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay.”
- Browning.



You’ll take my tale with a little salt,
But it needs none, nevertheless,
I was foil’d completely, fairly at fault,
Dishearten’d, too, I confess.
At the splitters’ tent I had seen the track
Of horse-hoofs fresh on the sward,
And though Darby Lynch and Donovan Jack
(Who could swear through a ten-inch board)
Solemnly swore he had not been there,
I was just as sure that they lied,
For to Darby all that is foul was fair,
And Jack for his life was tried.

We had run him for seven miles and more
As hard as our nags could split;
At the start they were all too weary and sore,
And his was quite fresh and fit.
Young Marsden’s pony had ...

    Like a thousan' birds o' brightness from the isles o' summer seas,
    Rickollections, full o' gladness, come with songs and lullabies,
    An' I listen to the carols that with gentle voices roll,
    Full o' tenderness an' beauty, down upon my weary soul,
    Fer thar's one thet keeps a-singin' with a song thet's never done,
    An' I see the bendin' willers on the banks o' Turkey Run.

    An' agin' I be a youngster with a youngster's foolin' dreams,
    With his high-falutin' notions an' his fiddle-faddle schemes;
    With the laughin' an' the cryin', with the sorrow an' the joy,
    Thet is jumbled up together in the bosom o' the boy;
    An' agin my arly fancies in a fairy loom are spun
    Underneath the dancin' shadders on the banks o' Turkey Run.

    An' ag...

Neobule, being tired,
Far too tired to laugh or weep,
From the hours, rosy and gray,
Hid her golden face away.
Neobule, fain of sleep,
Slept at last as she desired!

Neobule! is it well,
That you haunt the hollow lands,
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Plucking, with their spectral hands,
Scentless blooms of asphodel?

Neobule, tired to death
Of the flowers that I threw
On her flower-like, fair feet,
Sighed for blossoms not so sweet,
Lunar roses pale and blue,
Lilies of the world beneath.

Neobule! ah, too tired
Of the dreams and days above!
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Out of life and out of love,
Sleeps the sleep which she desired.

Oh, unhappy stars! your fate I mourn,

Ye by whom the sea-toss'd sailor's lighted,
Who with radiant beams the heav'ns adorn,

But by gods and men are unrequited:
For ye love not, ne'er have learnt to love!
Ceaselessly in endless dance ye move,
In the spacious sky your charms displaying,

What far travels ye have hasten'd through,
Since, within my loved one's arms delaying,

I've forgotten you and midnight too!

SHE. - "Up and down, up and down,
            From early eve to early day.
        Life is quicker in the town;
            When you've leisure, anyway!

        "Down and up, down and up!
            O will no one stop and speak?
        I would really like to sup,
            And my limbs are heavy and weak.

        "What's my price, sir? I'm no Jew.
            If with me you wish to sleep,
        'Tis five francs, sir. Surely you
            Will admit that that is cheap?"

HE. - "Christ, if you are not stone blind,
        Stone deaf also, you know it is
    Christian towns leave far behind
        Sodom and thos...

[1]


        "Take back the virgin page."
        MOORE'S Irish Melodies.


No longer dear Vesey, feel hurt and uneasy
    At hearing it said by the Treasury brother,
That thou art a sheet of blank paper, my Vesey,
    And he, the dear, innocent placeman, another.[2]

For lo! what a service we Irish have done thee;--
    Thou now art a sheet of blank paper no more;
By St. Patrick, we've scrawled such a lesson upon thee
    As never was scrawled upon foolscap before.

Come--on with your spectacles, noble Lord Duke,
    (Or O'Connell has green ones he haply would lend you,)
Read Vesey all o'er (as you can't read a book)
    And improve by the lesson we bog-trotters send you;

A lesson, in ...