Betrayal

        There was a maiden all forlorn,
        She loved a youth, his name was Thorn,
        But he was shy for to disclose
        How he loved dear the sweet May Rose.

        Lustre sweet it would give to Thorn,
        If this fair flower would it adorn,
        Said he all other names above
        Your charming name alone I love.

        Said she of beauty 'tis soon shorn,
        Unless that it is joined to Thorn,
        It very soon doth droop and die,
        And she heaved a gentle sigh.

        Said he we'll wed to-morrow morn,
        No more from me you shall be torn,
        For you will banish all my woes,
        And near my heart I'll wear the rose.

        Now little rose buds they are born,
        All clingin...

There is a gladness over all the earth,
For summer is abroad in breezy mirth,
Nature rejoices and the heavens are glad,
And I alone am desolate and sad,
For I sit mourning by an empty cot,
Refusing comfort because one is not.

And I will mourn because I am bereaved,
Others have suffered others too have grieved
Over hopes broken even as mine are broke,
By a swift unexpected bitter stroke,
And I must weep as weeping Jacob prest,
To grieving lips his last ones princely vest

You tell me cease weeping, to resign
Unto the Father's a will this will of mine,
You say my lamb is on the Shepherd s breast,
My flower blooms in gardens of the blest,
I know it all I say, Thy will be done
Yet I must mourn for him--my son! my son!

"What, are you lost, my pretty little lady?
    This is no place for such sweet things as you.
Our bodies, rank with sweat, will make you sicken,
    And, you'll observe, our lives are rank lives too."

"Oh no, I am not lost! Oh no, I've come here
    (And I have brought my lute, see, in my hand),
To see you, and to sing of all you suffer
    To the great world, and make it understand!"

"Well, say! If one of those who'd robbed you thousands,
    Dropped you a sixpence in the gutter where
You lay and rotted, would you call her angel,
    For all her charming smile and dainty air?"

"Oh no, I come not thus! Oh no, I've come here
    With heart ...

The roses all were pink and red,
Before the Bumble Bee,
A lover bold, with cloak of gold,
Came singing merrily
Along the sunlit ways that led
From woodland, and from lea.

He paused beside an opening rose,
The garden's pet and pride;
She burst in flower that very hour,
While wooing zephyrs sighed;
No smile had she for one of those,
And hope within them died.

The ardent butterfly in vain
On radiant wings drew near;
The hapless moth in vain grew wroth -
The fair rose leaned to hear
The deep-voiced stranger's low refrain
That thrilled upon her ear.

She gave her heart in love's delight
And let the whole world see;
Alas! one day, away, away,
Sped truant Bumble Bee;
'Twas then the red rose turned to white -
So was ...

(See Note)

Fair Venevil hastened with tripping feet
    Her lover to meet.
He sang, so it rang o'er the church far away:
    "Good-day! Good-day!"

And all the little birds sang right merrily their lay:
    "Midsummer Day
    Brings us laughter and play;
But later know I little, if she twines her wreath so gay!"

She twined him a wreath of the flowers blue:
    "My eyes for you!"
He tossed it and caught it and to her did bend:
    "Good-by, my friend!"
And loudly he exulted at the field's far distant end:
    "Midsummer Day
    Brings us laughter and play;
But later know I little, if she twines her wreath so gay!"

She twined him a wreath: "Do at all you care
    For my golden hair?"
She twined one, and gave in life's hour s...

Now that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe,
Never to press thy cosy cushions more,
Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,
Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:

Knowing thy natural receptivity,
I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve,
My sombre image, warped by insidious heave
Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee.

So be it. I have borne such. Let thy dreams
Of me and mine diminish day by day,
And yield their space to shine of smugger things;
Till I shape to thee but in fitful gleams,
And then in far and feeble visitings,
And then surcease. Truth will be truth alway.

The eye was shut in men; the hearing ear
Dull unto deafness; nought but earthly things
Had credence; and no highest art that flings
A spirit radiance from it, like the spear
Of the ice-pointed mountain, lifted clear
In the nigh sunrise, had made skyey springs
Of light in the clouds of dull imaginings:
Vain were the painter or the sculptor here.
Give man the listening heart, the seeing eye;
Give life; let sea-derived fountain well,
Within his spirit, infant waves, to tell
Of the far ocean-mysteries that lie
Silent upon the horizon,--evermore
Falling in voices on the human shore.

Lullaby on the wing
Of my song, O my own!
Soft airs of evening
Join my song's murmuring tone.

Lullaby, O my love!
Close your eyes, lake-like clear;
Lullaby, while above
Wake the stars, with heaven near.

Lullaby, sweet, so still
In arms of death; I alone
Sing lullaby, like a rill,
To your form, cold as a stone.

Lullaby, O my heart!
Sleep in peace, all alone;
Night has come, and your part
For loving is wholly done!

Il cantar novo e 'l pianger degli augelli.

MORNING.


    The birds' sweet wail, their renovated song,
At break of morn, make all the vales resound;
With lapse of crystal waters pouring round,
In clear, swift runnels, the fresh shores among.
She, whose pure passion knows nor guile nor wrong,
With front of snow, with golden tresses crown'd,
Combing her aged husband's hoar locks found,
Wakes me when sportful wakes the warbling throng.
Thus, roused from sleep, I greet the dawning day,
And its succeeding sun, with one more bright,
Still dazzling, as in early youth, my sight:
Both suns I've seen at once uplift their ray;
This drives the radiance of the stars away,
But that which gilds my life eclipses e'en his light.

NOTT.

I clomb full high the belfry tower
    Up to yon arrow-slit, up and away,
I said 'let me look on my heart's fair flower
    In the wallèd garden where she doth play.'

My care she knoweth not, no nor the cause,
    White rose, red rose about her hung,
And I aloft with the doves and the daws.
    They coo and call to their callow young.

Sing, 'O an she were a white rosebud fair
    Dropt, and in danger from passing feet,
'T is I would render her service tender,
    Upraised on my bosom with reverence meet.'

Playing at the ball, my dearest of all,
    When she grows older how will it be,
I dwell far away from her thoughts to-day
    That heed not, need not, or mine or me.

Sing, 'O an my love were a fledgeling dove
    That flutters fo...

The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up the clouds are split
Asunder, and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not! the wind is in th...

Why view'st thou, Edwy, with disdainful mien
    The little Naiad of the Downton Wave?
    High 'mid the rocks, where her clear waters lave
    The circling, gloomy basin. - In such scene,
Silent, sequester'd, few demand, I ween,
    That last perfection Phidian chisels gave.
    Dimly the soft and musing Form is seen
    In the hush'd, shelly, shadowy, lone concave. -
As sleeps her pure, tho' darkling fountain there,
    I love to recollect her, stretch'd supine
    Upon its mossy brink, with pendent hair,
As dripping o'er the flood. - Ah! well combine
    Such gentle graces, modest, pensive, fair,
    To aid the magic of her watry shrine.

1: The above Sonnet was addressed to a Friend, who had fastidiously despised, because he did not think it exquisite sc...

Love entered in my heart one day,
A sad, unwelcome guest;
But when he begged that he might stay,
I let him wait and rest.
He broke my sleep with sorrowing,
And shook my dreams with tears,
And when my heart was fain to sing,
He stilled its joy with fears.

But now that he has gone his way,
I miss the old sweet pain,
And sometimes in the night I pray
That he may come again.

Spring it is cheery,
Winter is dreary,
Green leaves hang, but the brown must fly;
When he's forsaken,
Wither'd and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?

Love will not clip him,
Maids will not lip him,
Maud and Marian pass him by;
Youth it is sunny,
Age has no honey, -
What can an old man do but die?

June it was jolly,
Oh for its folly!
A dancing leg and a laughing eye;
Youth may be silly,
Wisdom is chilly, -
What can an old man do but die?

Friends, they are scanty,
Beggars are plenty,
If he has followers, I know why;
Gold's in his clutches,
(Buying him crutches!)
What can an old man do but die?

We now, held in captivity,
Spring to our labours nor greive!
See now, how it is a blesseder,
Brothers, to give than to receive!
Keep trust, wherefore ye were made,
Paying the duty ye owe;
For a clean thrust and the sheer of the blade
Shall carry us where we should go.

That ocean you have late survey’d,
Those rocks I too have seen;
But I, afflicted and dismay’d,
You, tranquil and serene.


You from the flood-controlling steep
Saw stretch’d before your view,
With conscious joy, the threatening deep,
No longer such to you.


To me the waves, that ceaseless broke
Upon the dangerous coast,
Hoarsely and ominously spoke
Of all my treasure lost.


Your sea of troubles you have past,
And found the peaceful shore;
I, tempest-toss’d, and wreck’d at last,
Come home to port no more.

Walking at eve I met a little child
Running beside a tragic-featured dame,
Who checked his blitheness with a quick "For shame!"
And seemed by sharp caprice froward and mild.
Scarce heeding her the sweet one ran, beguiled
By the lit street, and his eyes too aflame;
Only, at whiles, into his eyes there came
Bewilderment and grief with terror wild.

So, Beauty, dost thou run with tragic life;
So, with the curious world's caress enchanted,
Even of ill things thine ecstasy dost make;
Yet at the touch of fear and vital strife
The splendours thy young innocency forsake,
And with thy foster-mother's woe thou art haunted.

Out of the sunshine and out of the heat,
Out of the dust of the grimy street,
A song fluttered down in the form of a dove,
And it bore me a message, the one word--Love!

Ah, I was toiling, and oh, I was sad:
I had forgotten the way to be glad.
Now, smiles for my sadness and for my toil, rest
Since the dove fluttered down to its home in my breast!