Betrayal

Let others prate of Greece and Rome,
And towns where they may never be,
The muse should wander nearer home.
My country is enough for me;
Her wooded hills that watch the sea,
Her inland miles of springing corn,
At Macedon or Barrakee,
I love the land where I was born.

On Juliet smile the autumn stars
And windswept plains by Winchelsea,
In summer on their sandy bars
Her rivers loiter languidly.
Where singing waters fall and flee
The gullied ranges dip to Lorne
With musk and gum and myrtle tree,
I love the land where I was born.

The wild things in her tangles move
As blithe as fauns in Sicily,
Where Melbourne rises roof by roof
The tall ships serve her at the quay,
And hers the yoke of liberty
On stalwart shoulders lightly wor...

    Spring heralds the summer with lilacs perched from that door.

    In snows, a swarm of bushes lie black and apparently rootless as the town's iron-gate bridge collapses under the centre part of the main road.

    Little enclaves of activity pass as stores, mere centrefolds across busy highway arteries this time of year.

    I am a grey fleck in my dark wool coat near the perimeter of a winding fence.

    The casual observer gives me half a chance to be seen in the deathless white, opaque coloured moonstone so still against the field's shores.

    A plaster river, her sides inserted with isle-dotted chunks, hands across a winter solstice tribal dance.

    Ostensibly, I poke the land from stylized limbo, a chalky substance disturbed with every movement's cough.

As Rueben wor smookin his pipe tother neet,
Bi th' corner o'th' little "Slip Inn;"
He spied some fowk marchin, an fancied he heeard
A varry queer sooart ov a din.
As nearer they coom he sed, "Bless mi life!
What means all this hullaballoo?
If they dooant stop that din they'll sewer get run in,
An just sarve 'em reight if they do."

But as they approached, he saw wi' surprise,
They seemed a respectable lot;
An th' hymn at they sung he'd net heeard for soa long,
Wol he felt fairly rooited to th' spot.
I'th' front wor a woman who walked backards rooad,
Beatin time wi' a big umberel,
An he sed, "Well, aw'll bet, that licks all aw've seen yet,
What they'll do next noa mortal can tell."

On they coom like a flood, an shoo saw Rueben stood, -
An her ee...

    I

    I took the clock down from the shelf;
    "At eight," said I, "I shoot myself."
    It lacked a MINUTE of the hour,
    And as I waited all a-cower,
    A skinful of black, boding pain,
    Bits of my life came back again. . . .

    "Mother, there's nothing more to eat -
    Why don't you go out on the street?
    Always you sit and cry and cry;
    Here at my play I wonder why.
    Mother, when you dress up at night,
    Red are your cheeks, your eyes are bright;
    Twining a ribband in your hair,
    Kissing good-bye you go down-stair.
    Then I'm as lonely as can be.
    Oh, how I wish you were with me!
    Yet when you go out on the street,
    Mother, there's always lots to eat. . . ."


    I...

You gave but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen’s pence
By Biddy’s halfpennies have lain
To be ‘some sort of evidence,’
Before you’ll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market place,
What th’ onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino’s windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds’ will.
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To...

A wounded Chieftain, lying
    By the Danube's leafy side,
Thus faintly said, in dying,
    "Oh! bear, thou foaming tide.
    "This gift to my lady-bride."

'Twas then, in life's last quiver,
    He flung the scarf he wore
Into the foaming river,
    Which, ah too quickly, bore
    That pledge of one no more!

With fond impatience burning,
    The Chieftain's lady stood,
To watch her love returning
    In triumph down the flood,
    From that day's field of blood.

But, field, alas, ill-fated!
    The lady saw, instead
Of the bark whose speed she waited,
    Her hero's scarf, all red
With the drops his heart had shed.

One shriek--and all was over--
    Her life-pulse ceased to beat;
The gloomy waves now cover<...

Go, little book, and be the looking-glass
Of her dear soul,
The mirror of her moments as they pass,
Keeping the whole;
Wherein she still may look on yesterday
To-day to cheer,
And towards To-morrow pass upon her way
Without a fear.
For yesterday hath never won a crown,
However fair,
But that To-day a better for its own
Might win and wear;
And yesterday hath never joyed a joy,
However sweet,
That this To-day or that To-morrow too
May not repeat.
Think too, To-day is trustee for to-morrow,
And present pain
That's bravely borne shall ease the future sorrow
Nor cry in vain
'Spare us To-day, To-morrow bring the rod,'
For then again
To-morrow from To-morrow still shall borrow,
A little ease to gain:
But bear to-day whate'er To...

To weave a garland for the rose.
    And think thus crown'd 'twould lovelier be,
Were far less vain than to suppose
    That silks and gems add grace to thee.
Where is the pearl whose orient lustre
    Would not, beside thee, look less bright?
What gold could match the glossy cluster
    Of those young ringlets full of light?

Bring from the land, where fresh it gleams,
    The bright blue gem of India's mine,
And see how soon, though bright its beams,
    'Twill pale before one glance of thine:
Those lips, too, when their sounds have blest us
    With some divine, mellifluous air,
Who would not say that Beauty's cestus
    Had let loose all its witcheries there?

Here, to this conquering host of charms
    I now give up my spell-bound heart.

My Anna, summer laughs in mirth,
And we will of the party be,
And leave the crickets in the hearth
For green fields' merry minstrelsy.

I see thee now with little hand
Catch at each object passing bye,
The happiest thing in all the land
Except the bee and butterfly.

*    *    *    *    *

And limpid brook that leaps along,
Gilt with the summer's burnished gleam,
Will stop thy little tale or song
To gaze upon its crimping stream.

Thou'lt leave my hand with eager speed
The new discovered things to see--
The old pond with its water weed
And danger-daring willow tree,
Who leans an ancient invalid
Oer spots where deepest waters be.

In sudden shout and wild surprise
I hear thy simple wonderment,
As new things meet...

I never hear the sound of thy glad bells,
Oxford, and chime harmonious, but I say,
Sighing to think how time has worn away,
Some spirit speaks in the sweet tone that swells,
Heard after years of absence, from the vale
Where Cherwell winds. Most true it speaks the tale
Of days departed, and its voice recalls
Hours of delight and hope in the gay tide
Of life, and many friends now scattered wide
By many fates. Peace be within thy walls!
I have scarce heart to visit thee; but yet,
Denied the joys sought in thy shades, denied
Each better hope, since my poor Harriet died,
What I have owed to thee, my heart can ne'er forget!

The gray dawn on the mountain top
Is slow to pass away.
Still lays him by in sluggish dreams,
The golden God of day.

And then a light along the hills,
Your laughter silvery gay;
The Sun God wakes, a bluebird trills,
You come and it is day.

Who beckons the green ivy up
Its solitary tower of stone?
What spirit lures the bindweed's cup
    Unfaltering on?
Calls even the starry lichen to climb
By agelong inches endless Time?

Who bids the hollyhock uplift
Her rod of fast-sealed buds on high;
Fling wide her petals - silent, swift,
    Lovely to the sky?
Since as she kindled, so she will fade,
Flower above flower in squalor laid.

Ever the heavy billow rears
All its sea-length in green, hushed wall;
But totters as the shore it nears,
    Foams to its fall;
Where was its mark? on what vain quest
Rose that great water from its rest?

So creeps ambition on; so climb
Man's vaunting thoughts. He, set on high,
Forgets his birth, small space, brief time,
    That he sh...

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,

Are lips,and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words,

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined
Then desolately fall,
O God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a pall,

Thy heart,thy heart!,I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy,
Of the baubles that it may.

How lovely the elder brother's
Life all laced in the other's,
Lóve-laced! what once I well
Witnessed; so fortune fell.
When Shrovetide, two years gone,
Our boys' plays brought on
Part was picked for John,
Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy
Ran revel in the elder boy.
Their night was come now; all
Our company thronged the hall;
Henry, by the wall,
Beckoned me beside him:
I came where called, and eyed him
By meanwhiles; making mý play
Turn most on tender byplay.
For, wrung all on love's rack,
My lad, and lost in Jack,
Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip;
Or drove, with a diver's dip,
Clutched hands down through clasped knees -
Truth's tokens tricks like these,
Old telltales, with what stress
He hung on the imp's success.
Now the...

"How many have gone?" was the question of old
Ere Time our bright ring of its jewels bereft;
Alas! for too often the death-bell has tolled,
And the question we ask is, "How many are left?"

Bright sparkled the wine; there were fifty that quaffed;
For a decade had slipped and had taken but three.
How they frolicked and sung, how they shouted and laughed,
Like a school full of boys from their benches set free!

There were speeches and toasts, there were stories and rhymes,
The hall shook its sides with their merriment's noise;
As they talked and lived over the college-day times, -
No wonder they kept their old name of "The Boys"!

The seasons moved on in their rhythmical flow
With mornings like maidens that pouted or smiled,
With the bud and the leaf and th...

I.

It led adown the sloping hill, and through the valley wound,
And where the blooming clover shed its fragrance all around,
And then between the maple trees, across the little brook,
To where the old fence bars let down, a tortuous course it took;
And often are the times I've heard the merry, ringing laugh,
From rosy-ankled children there, along the meadow path.


II.

Three boys--and a little girl whose hair was chestnut gold--
(She's resting now in dreamless sleep beneath the crumbling mold;)--
But I remember her as when, with innocence and glee,
Her laughing eyes looked into mine--for she was dear to me;
And thus it is I love to let the fancy photograph
The merry group that idled there, along the meadow path.


III.

Adown it...

When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took, the same as me!

The market-girls an' fishermen,
The shepherds an' the sailors, too,
They 'eard old songs turn up again,
But kep' it quiet, same as you!

They knew 'e stole; 'e knew they knowed.
They didn't tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at 'Omer down the road,
An' 'e winked back, the same as us!

There was once a town, the inhabitants of which were so passionately fond of poetry, that if some weeks passed by without the appearance of any good new poems, they regarded such a poetic dearth as a public misfortune.

They used at such times to put on their worst clothes, to sprinkle ashes on their heads; and, assembling in crowds in the public squares, to shed tears and bitterly to upbraid the muse who had deserted them.

On one such inauspicious day, the young poet Junius came into a square, thronged with the grieving populace.

With rapid steps he ascended a forum constructed for this purpose, and made signs that he wished to recite a poem.

The lictors at once brandished their fasces. 'Silence! attention!' they shouted loudly, and the crowd was hushed in expectation.

'Friends! Comra...