Betrayal

ACT II.

LIEBETRAUT plays and sings.

His bow and dart bearing,
And torch brightly flaring,

Dan Cupid on flies;
With victory laden,
To vanquish each maiden

He roguishly tries.

Up! up!

On! on!
His arms rattle loudly,
His wings rustle proudly,
And flames fill his eyes.

Then finds he each bosom

Defenseless and bare;
They gladly receive him

And welcome him there.
The point of his arrows

He lights in the glow;
They clasp him and kiss him

And fondle him so.
He e o! Pap!

    Friend, old friend in the Manse by the fireside sitting,
        Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log;
    You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,
    Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog.

    Silent here in the south sit I; and, leaning,
        One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand;
    Gazes deep in its heart--but ah! its meaning
        Rather I read in the shadows and understand.

    Dear, kind she is; and daily dearer, kinder,
        Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:

Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her
        Lit up a face in the leathern dusk of the shelves.

    Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:
        Yet there is one gives back to the wint...

I heard a strain of music in the street -
    A wandering waif of sound.    And then straightway
    A nameless desolation filled the day.
The great green earth that had been fair and sweet,
Seemed but a tomb; the life I thought replete
    With joy, grew lonely for a vanished May.
    Forgotten sorrows resurrected lay
Like bleaching skeletons about my feet.

Above me stretched the silent, suffering sky,
    Dumb with vast anguish for departed suns
    That brutal Time to nothingness has hurled.
The daylight was as sad as smiles that lie
    Upon the wistful, unkissed mouths of nuns,
    And I stood prisoned in an awful world.

In the silver light after a storm,
Under dripping boughs of bright new green,
I take the low path to hear the meadowlarks
Alone and high-hearted as if I were a queen.
What have I to fear in life or death
Who have known three things: the kiss in the night,
The white flying joy when a song is born,
And meadowlarks whistling in silver light.

The end was quick and bitter.
Slow and sweet was the time between us,
slow and sweet were the nights
when my hands did not touch one another in despair but in the love
of your body which came between them.

And when I entered into you
it seemed then that great happiness
could be measured with precision
of sharp pain. Quick and bitter.

Slow and sweet were the nights.
Now is bitter and grinding as sand,
"Let's be sensible" and similar curses.

And as we stray further from love
we multiply the words,
words and sentences so long and orderly.
Had we remained together
we could have become a silence.

The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over
The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide
Slowly into another day; slowly the rover
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.

I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting
Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped
And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting
The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped.

Feeling myself undawning, the day's light playing upon me,
I who am substance of shadow, I all compact
Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly
Among the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled and racked.

I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence of death;
And what do I care though the very stones should cry me unreal, th...

’Tis evening; the black snail has got on his track,
And gone to its nest is the wren,
And the packman snail, too, with his home on his back,
Clings to the bowed bents like a wen.

The shepherd has made a rude mark with his foot
Where his shadow reached when he first came,
And it just touched the tree where his secret love cut
Two letters that stand for love’s name.

The evening comes in with the wishes of love,
And the shepherd he looks on the flowers,
And thinks who would praise the soft song of the dove,
And meet joy in these dew-falling hours.

For Nature is love, and finds haunts for true love,
Where nothing can hear or intrude;
It hides from the eagle and joins with the dove,
In beautiful green solitude.

I never climb a high hill
Or gaze across the lea,
But, Oh, beyond the two of them,
Beyond the height and blue of them,
I'm looking for the sea.

A blue sea--a crooning sea--
A grey sea lashed with foam--
But, Oh, to take the drift of it,
To know the surge and lift of it,
And 'tis I am longing for it as the homeless long for home.

I never dream at night-time
Or close my eyes by day,
But there I have the might of it,
The wind-whipped, sun-drenched sight of it,
That calls my soul away.

Oh, deep dreams and happy dreams,
Its dreaming still I'd be,
For still the land I'm waking in,
'Tis that my heart is breaking in,
And 'tis far where I'd be sleeping with the blue waves over me.

Ask if I love thee?    Oh, smiles cannot tell
Plainer what tears are now showing too well.
Had I not loved thee, my sky had been clear:
Had I not loved thee, I had not been here,
    Weeping by thee.

Ask if I love thee?    How else could I borrow
Pride from man's slander, and strength from my sorrow?
Laugh when they sneer at the fanatic's bride,
Knowing no bliss, save to toil and abide
    Weeping by thee.

Andernach on the Rhine,
August 1851.

    The gipsy's life is a merry life,
    And ranting boys we be;
    We pay to none or rent or tax,
    And live untith'd and free.
    None care for us, for none care we,
    And where we list we roam,
    And merry boys we gipsies be,
    Though the wild woods are our home.

    And come what will brings no dismay;
    Our minds are ne'er perplext;
    For if to-day is a swaly day,
    We meet with luck the next.
    And thus we sing and kiss our mates,
    While our chorus still shall be,--
    Bad luck to tyrant magistrates,
    And the gipsies' camp still free.

    To mend old pans and bottom chairs
    Around the towns we tramp,
    Then a day or two our purse repairs,
    And plenty fills our camp;
    And our song we sin...

Suggested by a drawing of Thomas Moran, the American painter.

This must be the very night!
The moon knows it!--and the trees!
They stand straight upright,
Each a sentinel drawn up,
As if they dared not know
Which way the wind might blow!
The very pool, with dead gray eye,
Dully expectant, feels it nigh,
And begins to curdle and freeze!
And the dark night,
With its fringe of light,
Holds the secret in its cup!

II. What can it be, to make
The poplars cease to shiver and shake,
And up in the dismal air
Stand straight and stiff as the human hair
When the human soul is dizzy with dread--
All but those two that strain
Aside in a frenzy of speechless pain,
Though never a wind sends out a breath
To tunnel the foggy rheum of ...

The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must shed
That nearer heaven the living ones may climb;
The false must fail, though from our shores of time
The old lament be heard, "Great Pan is dead!"
That wail is Error's, from his high place hurled;
This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod;
Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God
Troubling with life the waters of the world.
Even as they list the winds of the Spirit blow
To turn or break our century-rusted vanes;
Sands shift and waste; the rock alone remains
Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides come and go,
And storm-clouds, rent by thunderbolt and wind,
Leave, free of mist, the permanent stars behind.

Therefore I trust, although to outward sense
Both true and false seem shaken; I will hold
With newer light my reve...

When I did go from thee I felt that smart
Which bodies do when souls from them depart.
Thou did'st not mind it; though thou then might'st see
Me turn'd to tears; yet did'st not weep for me.
'Tis true, I kiss'd thee; but I could not hear
Thee spend a sigh t'accompany my tear.
Methought 'twas strange that thou so hard should'st prove,
Whose heart, whose hand, whose every part spake love.
Prithee, lest maids should censure thee, but say
Thou shed'st one tear, whenas I went away;
And that will please me somewhat: though I know,
And Love will swear't, my dearest did not so.

The grass shall never forget this grave.
When homeward footing it in the sun
After the weary ride by rail,
The stripling soldiers passed her door,
Wounded perchance, or wan and pale,
She left her household work undone--
Duly the wayside table spread,
With evergreens shaded, to regale
Each travel-spent and grateful one.
So warm her heart--childless--unwed,
Who like a mother comforted.

I dream that the dearest I ever knew
    Has died and been entombed.
I am sure it's a dream that cannot be true,
    But I am so overgloomed
By its persistence, that I would gladly
    Have quick death take me,
Rather than longer think thus sadly;
    So wake me, wake me!

It has lasted days, but minute and hour
    I expect to get aroused
And find him as usual in the bower
    Where we so happily housed.
Yet stays this nightmare too appalling,
    And like a web shakes me,
And piteously I keep on calling,
    And no one wakes me!

Faith! the Dandelion is
To my mind too lowly;
Then the winsome Violet
Is, forsooth, too holy.

There's the Touch-me-not - go to!
What! a face that's speckled
Like a buxom milking-maid's
Which the sun hath freckled!

And the Tiger-lily's wild,
Flirts, is fierce and haughty;
And the Sweet-Brier Rose, I swear,
Pricks you and is naughty.

Columbine a fool's cap hath,
Then she is too merry;
Gossip, I would sooner woo
Some plebeian Berry.

There's the shy Anemone, -
Well - her face shows sorrow;
Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day,
Dead and gone to-morrow.

And that big-eyed, fair-cheeked wench,
The untoward Daisy,
She's been wooed, aye! overmuch -
Then she is too lazy.

Pleasant persons are they all,

Dear little Ethel,
    Child that I love,
Come, as an angel,
    Down from above.

Golden-rayed tresses,
    Shining and bright,
Inviting caresses,
    Mirroring light.

Eyes blue and tender,
    Beaming with joy.
Who would offend her?
    Who would annoy?

Ripple thy laughter!
    Bubble thy glee!
Loud will the rafter
    Echo to thee.

Clinging to mother,
    Set on her knee;
She has no other
    Dearer than thee.

Slave thou hast bound her;
    Nestles thine arm,
Twining around her,
    Telling thy charm.

Innocent speeches
    Silencing strife;
Hallowed each is:
    Pearls of a life.

Come, come and kiss me,
    Child of my heart.
Oh! I would miss thee<...

When by the green-wood side, at summer eve,
Poetic visions charm my closing eye;
And fairy-scenes, that Fancy loves to weave,
Shift to wild notes of sweetest Minstrelsy;
'Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heav'n away,
And all is Solitude, and all is Night!
--Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air!
No guardian sylph, in golden panoply,
Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear.
Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings,
Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore.
Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful laram flings!
--I wake in horror, and 'dare sleep no more!'