Betrayal

"I think I hear the sound of horses feet
    Beating upon the gravelled avenue.
Go to the window that looks on the street,
    He would not let me die alone, I knew."
Back to the couch the patient watcher passed,
And said: "It is the wailing of the blast."

She turned upon her couch and, seeming, slept,
    The long, dark lashes shadowing her cheek;
And on and on the weary moments crept,
    When suddenly the watcher heard her speak:
"I think I hear the sound of horses' hoofs - "
And answered, "'Tis the rain upon the roofs."

Unbroken silence, quiet, deep, profound.
    The restless sleeper turns: "How dark, how late!
What is it that I hear - a trampling sound?
    I think there is a horseman at the gate."
The watcher turns away her eyes tear-blind:<...

The minstrel of the classic lay
Of love and wine who sings
Still found the fingers run astray
That touched the rebel strings.

Of Cadmus he would fain have sung,
Of Atreus and his line;
But all the jocund echoes rung
With songs of love and wine.

Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught
Some fresher fancy's gleam;
My truant accents find, unsought,
The old familiar theme.

Love, Love! but not the sportive child
With shaft and twanging bow,
Whose random arrows drove us wild
Some threescore years ago;

Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
The urchin blind and bare,
But Love, with spectacles and staff,
And scanty, silvered hair.

Our heads with frosted locks are white,
Our roofs are thatched with snow,
But red, in c...

"Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth
Superillustrans claritate tua
Felices ignes horum malahoth!"
Thus chanting saw I turn that substance bright
With fourfold lustre to its orb again,
Revolving; and the rest unto their dance
With it mov'd also; and like swiftest sparks,
In sudden distance from my sight were veil'd.

Me doubt possess'd, and "Speak," it whisper'd me,
"Speak, speak unto thy lady, that she quench
Thy thirst with drops of sweetness." Yet blank awe,
Which lords it o'er me, even at the sound
Of Beatrice's name, did bow me down
As one in slumber held. Not long that mood
Beatrice suffer'd: she, with such a smile,
As might have made one blest amid the flames,
Beaming upon me, thus her words began:
"Thou in thy thought art pond'ring (as I deem),
...

On these white cliffs, that calm above the flood
Uprear their shadowing heads, and at their feet
Hear not the surge that has for ages beat,
How many a lonely wanderer has stood!
And, whilst the lifted murmur met his ear,
And o'er the distant billows the still eve
Sailed slow, has thought of all his heart must leave
To-morrow; of the friends he loved most dear;
Of social scenes, from which he wept to part!
Oh! if, like me, he knew how fruitless all
The thoughts that would full fain the past recall,
Soon would he quell the risings of his heart,
And brave the wild winds and unhearing tide
The World his country, and his GOD his guide.

I

He was leaning by a face,
He was looking into eyes,
And he knew a trysting-place,
And he heard seductive sighs;
But the face,
And the eyes,
And the place,
And the sighs,
Were not, alas, the right ones the ones meet for him -
Though fine and sweet the features, and the feelings all abrim.

II

She was looking at a form,
She was listening for a tread,
She could feel a waft of charm
When a certain name was said;
But the form,
And the tread,
And the charm
Of name said,
Were the wrong ones for her, and ever would be so,
While the heritor of the right it would have saved her soul to know!

The vat-like cups of the fungus, filled
With the rain that fell last night,
Are casks of wine that the elves distilled
For revels the moon did light.

The owlet there with her "Who-oh-who,"
And the frog with his "All is right,"
Could tell a tale if they wanted to
Of what took place last night.

In that hollow beech, where the wood decays,
Their toadstool houses stand;
A little village of drabs and grays,
Cone-roofed, of Faeryland.

That moth, which gleams like a lichen there,
Is one of an elfin band,
That whisks away if you merely dare
To try to understand.

The snail, that slides on that mushroom's top,
And the slug on its sleepy trail,
Wax fat on the things the elves let drop
At feast in the moonlight pale.

The w...

Slow moves the pageant of a climbing race;
Their footsteps drag far, far below the height,
And, unprevailing by their utmost might,
Seem faltering downward from each hard won place.
No strange, swift-sprung exception we; we trace
A devious way thro' dim, uncertain light,--
Our hope, through the long vistaed years, a sight
Of that our Captain's soul sees face to face.
Who, faithless, faltering that the road is steep,
Now raiseth up his drear insistent cry?
Who stoppeth here to spend a while in sleep
Or curseth that the storm obscures the sky?
Heed not the darkness round you, dull and deep;
The clouds grow thickest when the summit's nigh.

        The little white bride is left alone
        With him, her lord; the guests have gone;
                The festal hall is dim.
        No jesting now, nor answering mirth.
        The hush of sleep falls on the earth
                And leaves her here with him.

        Why should there be, O little white bride,
        When the world has left you by his side,
                A tear to brim your eyes?
        Some old love-face that comes again,
        Some old love-moment sweet with pain
                Of passionate memories?

        Does your heart yearn back with last regret
        For the maiden meads of mignonette
                And the fairy-haunted wood,
        That you had not withheld from love,
        A little while, the fre...

        Away o'er the hills in the valley green
        Away from the noise of the busy town;
        I dream sweet dreams of the olden days
        Of you in your beautiful wedding gown.

        I dream that you come and sit by me
        And you hold my hand and ruff my hair;
        Your eyes shine with a sweet delight
        That I used to see so often there.

        Then my heart is filled with a hallowed love
        And I know t'is but a little way
        To the spirit land, and I know that I
        Shall meet you there some glad sweet day.

        Then our wedding day in the spirit land
        Will be filled with love and joy serene;
        And the infinite hand will guide us where
        The waters are still and the valleys green.

Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine,
Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing
And lay ghost hands on everything,
But leave the noonday's warm sunshine
To living lads for mirth and wine.

I met you suddenly down the street,
Strangers assume your phantom faces,
You grin at me from daylight places,
Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet
Dead men down the morning street.

ELIZABETH TO WALTER


He has come and he has gone,
    Meeting, parting, both are o'er;
And I feel the same dull pain,
Aching heart and throbbing brain
    Coming o'er me once again
That I often felt before.


For he is my father's son,
    And, in childhood's loving time
He and I so lone, so young,
No twin blossoms ever sprung,
No twin cherries ever clung,
    Closer than his heart and mine.

He is changed, ah me! ah me!
    Have we then a different aim?
Shall earth's glory or its gold
Make his heart to mine grow cold?
Or can new love kill the old?
    Leaving me for love and fame

Oh, my brother fair to see!
    Idol of my lonely heart,
Parting is a time of test,
Father, give him what is best,
...

Why do you follow me?--
Any moment I can be
Nothing but a laurel-tree.

Any moment of the chase
I can leave you in my place
A pink bough for your embrace.

Yet if over hill and hollow
Still it is your will to follow,
I am off;--to heel, Apollo!

I pluck Summer blossoms,
And think of rich bosoms--
The bosoms I've leaned on, and worshipped, and won.
The rich valley lilies,
The wood daffodillies,
Have been found in our rambles when Summer begun.

Where I plucked thee the bluebell,
'T was where the night dew fell,
And rested till morn in the cups of the flowers;
I shook the sweet posies,
Bluebells and brere roses,
As we sat in cool shade in Summer's warm hours.

Bedlam-cowslips and cuckoos,
With freck'd lip and hooked nose,
Growing safe near the hazel of thicket and woods,
And water blobs, ladies' smocks,
Blooming where haycocks
May be found, in the meadows, low places, and floods.

And cowslips a fair band
For May ball or garland,
That bloom in the meadows as seen by th...

To the Author of the "Songs of the Army of the Night."

We - who, encircled in sleepless sadness
    With ears laid close to the Austral earth,
Have heard far cries of wrong-wrought madness,
    Of hopeless anguish and murd'rous mirth
Beneath all noise of maudlin gladness
    Awail, environ the world's wide girth -

Almost arise with Hope's keen urging
    When out the vasty and night-bound North
Red rays ascend, and Songs resurging
    Through all the darkness and chill, come forth!

The comet climbs until it scorches
    The sacred dais that skies the great,
Until it gleams on palace porches,
    Where blissful aeons-to-be hold state -
Fades, and we know it one of the torches
    Madmen a moment elevate!

And, closer cl...

Deprive this strange and complex world
    Of all the charms of art;
Deprive it of those sweeter joys
    Which music doth impart;
But oh, preserve that smile, which tells
    The secret of the heart!

The world may lose its massive piles
    Which point their spires above;
May spare the tuneful nightingale
    And gently cooing dove;
But woe betide it, if it lose
    The sentiment of love!

I sleep and rest, my heart makes moan
Before I am well awake;
"Let me bleed! O let me alone,
Since I must not break!"

For children wake, though fathers sleep
With a stone at foot and at head:
O sleepless God, forever keep,
Keep both living and dead!

I lift mine eyes, and what to see
But a world happy and fair!
I have not wished it to mourn with me -
Comfort is not there.

O what anear but golden brooms,
And a waste of reedy rills!
O what afar but the fine glooms
On the rare blue hills!

I shall not die, but live forlore -
How bitter it is to part!
O to meet thee, my love, once more!
O my heart, my heart!

No more to hear, no more to see!
O that an echo might wake
And waft one note of thy psalm to me

In his great cushioned chair by the fender
    An old man sits dreaming to-night,
His withered hands, licked by the tender
    Warm rays of the red anthracite,
Are folded before him, all listless;
    His dim eyes are fixed on the blaze,
While over him sweeps the resistless
    Flood-tide of old days.

He hears not the mirth in the hallway,
    He hears not the sounds of good cheer,
That through the old homestead ring alway
    In the glad Christmas-time of the year.
He heeds not the chime of sweet voices
    As the last gifts are hung on the tree.
In a long-vanished day he rejoices -
    In his lost Used-to-be.

He has gone back across dead Decembers
    To his childhood's fair land of delight;
And his mother's sweet smile he remembers,

Tell it to the locked-up trees,
Cuckoo, bring your song here!
Warrant, Act and Summons, please,
For Spring to pass along here!
Tell old Winter, if he doubt,
Tell him squat and square, a!
Old Woman!
Old Woman!
Old Woman's let the Cuckoo out
At Heffle Cuckoo Fair, a!

March has searched and April tried,
'Tisn't long to May now.
Not so far to Whitsuntide
And Cuckoo's come to stay now!
Hear the valiant fellow shout
Down the orchard bare, a!
Old Woman!
Old Woman!
Old Woman's let the Cuckoo out
At Heffle Cuckoo Fair, a!

When your heart is young and gay
And the season rules it,
Work your works and play your play
'Fore the Autumn cools it!
Kiss you turn and turn-about,
But, my lad, beware, a!
Old Woman!