Betrayal

Thou art sleeping, brother, sleeping
    In thy lonely battle grave;
Shadows o'er the past are creeping,
Death, the reaper, still is reaping,
Years have swept, and years are sweeping
Many a memory from my keeping,
But I'm waiting still, and weeping
    For my beautiful and brave.

When the battle songs were chanted,
    And war's stirring tocsin pealed,
By those songs thy heart was haunted,
And thy spirit, proud, undaunted,
Clamored wildly -- wildly panted:
"Mother! let my wish be granted;
I will ne'er be mocked and taunted
That I fear to meet our vaunted
    Foemen on the bloody field.

"They are thronging, mother! thronging,
    To a thousand fields of fame;
Let me go -- 'tis wrong, and wronging
God and thee to crush this longin...

What do they matter, our headlong hates, when we take the toll of our Dead?
Think ye our glory and gain will pay for the torrent of blood we have shed?
By the cheers of our Victory will the heart of the mother be comforted?

If by the Victory all we mean is a broken and brooding foe;
Is the pomp and power of a glitt'ring hour, and a truce for an age or so:
By the clay-cold hand on the broken blade we have smitten a bootless blow!

If by the Triumph we only prove that the sword we sheathe is bright;
That justice and truth and love endure; that freedom's throned on the height;
That the feebler folks shall be unafraid; that Might shall never be Right;

If this be all: by the blood-drenched plains, by the havoc of fire and fear,
By the rending roar of the War of Wars, by the Dea...

Imprison'd songster, thou for me
Hath warbl'd many a cheerful lay,
Thy songs, so sweetly glad and free,
Revive my heart, from day to day.

The frost is keen, the wind is cold,
No wild-bird twitters from the spray,
But, still resounding as of old,
Thy voice thrills forth, and seems to say:

"Wake up! O sadden'd mortal, wake!
Shake off that anxious, careworn frown,
Thy hopes renew, fresh courage take,
Nor let your troubles weigh you down.

"See, I am happy all alone,
And, kept behind the prison bars,
I sing, and shouldst thou ever moan?
A mortal free, beneath the stars.

"I fly around my narrow cage,
I sing the song that gladdens you,
But carking care thy thoughts engage,
While walking free, 'neath heaven's blue.

"My...

O turn once more!
The meadows where we mused and strayed together
Abound and glow yet with the ruby sorrel;
'Twas there the bluebirds fought and played together,
Their quarrel was a flying bluebird-quarrel;
Their nest is firm still in the burnished cherry,
They will come back there some day and be merry;
O turn once more.

O turn once more!
The spring we lingered at is ever steeping
The long, cool grasses where the violets hide,
Where you awoke the flower-heads from their sleeping
And plucked them, proud in their inviolate pride;
You left the roots, the roots will flower again,
O turn once more and pluck the flower again;
O turn once more.

O turn once more!
We were the first to find the fairy places
Where the tall lady-slippers scarf'd and...

Well speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast!
Yet all unworthy of its trust thou art,
If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving heart,
Thou tread'st the solemn Pantheon of the Past,
By the great Future's dazzling hope made blind
To all the beauty, power, and truth behind.
Not without reverent awe shouldst thou put by
The cypress branches and the amaranth blooms,
Where, with clasped hands of prayer, upon their tombs
The effigies of old confessors lie,
God's witnesses; the voices of His will,
Heard in the slow march of the centuries still!
Such were the men at whose rebuking frown,
Dark with God's wrath, the tyrant's knee went down;
Such from the terrors of the guilty drew
The vassal's freedom and the poor man's due.
St. Anselm (may he rest forevermore
In Heaven's sw...

"Can mothers of our English isle,
    The pride of all the earth,
From any tribe of tender brutes,
    A mother's duly learn?"
So to a shepherd of the Alps,
    A guest of noble birth,
A traveller of English race
    Said on the swain's return;

When bringing to his simple cot
    A Goat of signal grace,
He, to his foreign guest, display'd
    The ornament she wore;
It was a splendid silver toy,
    It's folds her neck embrace,
And it's rich centre, highly wrought,
    This grateful motto bore:

    _Dear animal! This trinket wear,
    Mark of thy mental beauty!
    For teaching to an English fair,
    A mother's highest duty_!

"Good shepherd thou hast much to tell,
    Some curious tender tale,
Thy kindness I with...

Low laughed the Columbine,
Trembled her petals fine
    As the breeze blew;
In her dove-heart there stirred
Murmurs the dull bee heard,
And Love, Life's wild white bird,
    Straightway she knew.

Resting her lilac cheek
Gently, in aspect meek,
    On the gray stone,
The morning-glory, free,
Welcomed the yellow bee,

Heard the near-rolling sea
    Murmur and moan.

Calm lay the tawny sand
Stretching a long wet hand
    To the far wave.
Swift to her warm waiting breast
Longing to be possessed
Leaps 'neath his billowy crest
    Her Lover brave.

Tune - "Liggeram Cosh."



I.

    Blythe hae I been on yon hill
        As the lambs before me;
    Careless ilka thought and free
        As the breeze flew o'er me.
    Now nae langer sport and play,
        Mirth or sang can please me;
    Lesley is sae fair and coy,
        Care and anguish seize me.

II.

    Heavy, heavy is the task,
        Hopeless love declaring:
    Trembling, I dow nocht but glow'r,
        Sighing, dumb, despairing!
    If she winna ease the thraws
        In my bosom swelling,
    Underneath the grass-green sod
        Soon maun be my dwelling.

What does time whisper, youth gay and light,
While thinning thy locks, silken and bright,
While paling thy soft cheek's roseate dye,
Dimming the light of thy flashing eye,
Stealing thy bloom and freshness away -
Is he not hinting at death - decay?

Man, in the wane of thy stately prime,
Hear'st thou the silent warnings of Time?
Look at thy brow ploughed by anxious care,
The silver hue of thy once dark hair; -
What boot thine honors, thy treasures bright,
When Time tells of coming gloom and night?

Sad age, dost thou note thy strength nigh, spent,
How slow thy footstep - thy form how bent?
Yet on looking back how short doth seem
The checkered coarse of thy life's brief dream.
Time, daily weakening each link and tie,
Doth whisper how soon thou art...

    The friend whom wild from wisdom's way,
        The fumes of wine infuriate send;
    (Not moony madness more astray;)
        Who but deplores that hapless friend?

    Mine was th' insensate frenzied part,
        Ah, why should I such scenes outlive
    Scenes so abhorrent to my heart!
        'Tis thine to pity and forgive.

Since first I met thee, Dear, and long before
    I knew myself beloved, save by the sense
    All women have, a shadowy confidence
Half-fear, that feels its bliss nor asks for more,
    I have learned new desires, known Love's distress
    Sounded the deepest depths of loneliness.

I was a child at heart, and lived alone,
    Dreaming my dreams, as children may, at whiles,
    Between their hours of play, and Earth's broad smiles
Allured my heart, and ocean's marvellous tone
    Woke no strange echoes, and the woods' complain
    Made chants sonorous, stirred no thoughts of pain.

And if, sometimes, dear Nature spoke to me
    In tones mysterious, I had learned so much
    Dwelling beside her daily, that her touch
Made me discerning. Though I migh...

She stands like one with mazy cares distraught.
Around her sudden angry storm-clouds rise,
Dark, dark! and comes the look into her eyes
Of eld. All that herself herself hath taught
She cons anew, that courage new be caught
Of courage old. Yet comfortless still lies
Snake-like in her warm bosom (vexed with sighs)
Fear of the greatness that herself hath wrought.

No glory but her memory teems with it,
No beauty that's not hers; more nobly none
Of all her sisters runs with her; but she
For her old destiny dreams herself unfit,
And fumbling at the future doubtfully
Muses how Rome of Romans was undone.

I
Life, sublime and serene when time had power upon it and ruled its breath,
Changed it, bade it be glad or sad, and hear what change in the world's ear saith,
Shines more fair in the starrier air whose glory lightens the dusk of death.
Suns that sink on the wan sea's brink, and moons that kindle and flame and fade,
Leave more clear for the darkness here the stars that set not and see not shade
Rise and rise on the lowlier skies by rule of sunlight and moonlight swayed.
So, when night for his eyes grew bright, his proud head pillowed on Shakespeare's breast,
Hand in hand with him, soon to stand where shine the glories that death loves best,
Passed the light of his face from sight, and sank sublimely to radiant rest.

II
Far above us and all our love, beyond all reach of its voice...

PAGE.

Where goest thou? Where?
Miller's daughter so fair!

Thy name, pray?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.

    'Tis Lizzy.

PAGE.
Where goest thou? Where?
With the rake in thy hand?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
Father's meadows and land

To visit, I'm busy.

PAGE.
Dost go there alone?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
By this rake, sir, 'tis shown

That we're making the hay;
And the pears ripen fast
In the garden at last,

So I'll pick them to-day.

PAGE.
Is't a silent thicket I yonder view?

MILLER'S DAUGHTER.
Oh, yes! there are two;
There's one on each side.

PAGE.
I'll follow thee soon;
When the sun burns at noon
We'll go there, o'urselves from his rays to hide,...

I.

Dull, dimly gleaming,
The dawn looks downward
Where, flowing townward,
The river, steaming
With mist, is hidden:
Each bush, that huddles
Beside the road, the rain has pooled with puddles,
Seems, in the fog, a hag or thing hag-ridden.

II.

Where leaves hang tattered
In forest tangles,
And woodway angles
Are acorn-scattered,
Coughing and yawning
The woodsman slouches,
Or stands as silent as the hound that crouches
Beside him, ghostly in the mist-drenched dawning.

III.

Through roses, rotting
Within the garden,
With blooms, that harden,
Of marigolds, knotting,
(Each one an ember
Dull, dead and dripping,)
Her brow, from which their faded wreath is slipping,
Mantled in frost and fog, c...

When first we hear the shy-come nightingales,
They seem to mutter oer their songs in fear,
And, climb we eer so soft the spinney rails,
All stops as if no bird was anywhere.
The kindled bushes with the young leaves thin
Let curious eyes to search a long way in,
Until impatience cannot see or hear
The hidden music; gets but little way
Upon the path--when up the songs begin,
Full loud a moment and then low again.
But when a day or two confirms her stay
Boldly she sings and loud for half the day;
And soon the village brings the woodman's tale
Of having heard the newcome nightingale.

Out of that high pavilion
Where the sick, wind-harassed sun
In the whiteness of the day
Ghostly shone and stole away -
Parchèd with the utter thirst
Of unnumbered Libyan sands,
Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burst
Out of arid Africa
To the tideless sea, and smote
On our pale, moon-coolèd lands
The hot breath of a lion's throat.

And that furnace-heated breath
Blew into my placid dreams
The heart of fire from whence it came:
Haunt of beauty and of death
Where the forest breaks in flame
Of flaunting blossom, where the flood
Of life pulses hot and stark,
Where a wing'd death breeds in mud
And tumult of tree-shadowed streams -
Black waters, desolately hurled
Through the uttermost, lost, dark,
Secret places of the world.

The crooked paths go every way
Upon the hill - they wind about
Through the heather in and out
Of the quiet sunniness.
And there the goats, day after day,
Stray in sunny quietness,
Cropping here and cropping there,
As they pause and turn and pass,
Now a bit of heather spray,
Now a mouthful of the grass.

In the deeper sunniness,
In the place where nothing stirs,
Quietly in quietness,
In the quiet of the furze,
For a time they come and lie
Staring on the roving sky.

If you approach they run away,
They leap and stare, away they bound,
With a sudden angry sound,
To the sunny quietude;
Crouching down where nothing stirs
In the silence of the furze,
Couching down again to brood
In the sunny solitude.

If I were...