Betrayal

Doom’d, as I am, in solitude to waste
The present moments, and regret the past;
Deprived of every joy I valued most,
My friend torn from me, and my mistress lost;
Call not this gloom I wear, this anxious mien,
The dull effect of humour, or of spleen!
Still, still I mourn, with each returning day,
Him[1] snatch’d by fate in early youth away;
And her—thro’ tedious years of doubt and pain,
Fix’d in her choice, and faithful—but in vain!
O prone to pity, generous, and sincere,
Whose eye ne’er yet refused the wretch a tear;
Whose heart the real claim of friendship knows;
Nor thinks a lover’s are but fancied woes;
See me—ere yet my destined course half done,
Cast forth a wand’rer on a world unknown!
See me neglected on the world’s rude coast,
Each dea...

From me my Silvia ran away,
And running therewithal
A primrose bank did cross her way,
And gave my love a fall.

But trust me now, I dare not say
What I by chance did see;
But such the drap'ry did betray
That fully ravished me.

    Round them a fierce, wide, crazy noon
    Heaves with crushed lips and glowing sides
    Against the huge and drowsy sun.
    Beneath them turn the glittering tides
    Where dizzy waters reel with gold,
    And strange, rich trophies sink and rise
    From decks of sunken argosies.
    With shining arms they cleave the cold
    Far reaches of the sea, and beat
    The hissing foam with flash of feet
    Into bright fangs, while breathlessly
    Curls over them the amorous sea.

    Naked they laugh and revel there.
    One shakes the sea-drops from his hair,
    Then, singing, takes the bubbles: one
    Lies couched among the shells, the sands
    Telling gold hours between his hands:
    One floats like sea-wrack in the sun.
    The gods o...

Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage.


Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings
Where the noisome insect stings
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air;
Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash
Shall a mother's kindness bless them
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, g...

To Y ---, with a bowl of Bohemian glass.


From rocky hills, where climbs the vine;
Where on his waves the wandering Rhine
Sees imaged ruins, towns and towers,
Bare mountain scalps, green forest bowers;
From that broad land of poetry,
Wild legend, noble history,
This token many a day bore I,
To lay it at your feet, dear Y - -.

Little the stupid bowl will tell
Of all that on its way befell,
Since from old Frankfort's free domain,
Where smiling vineyards skirt the main,
It took its way; what sunsets red
Their splendours o'er the mountains shed,
How the blue Taunus' distant height
Like hills of fire gave back the light,
And how, on river, rock, and sky,
The sun declined so tenderly,
That o'er the scene white moonlight fell,
Ere...

Had I the gold that some so vainly spend,
For my lost loves a temple would I raise,
A shrine for each dear name: there should ascend
Incense for ever, and hymns of golden praise;
And I would live the remnant of my days,
Where hallowed windows cast their painted gleams,
At prayer before each consecrated face,
Kneeling within that cloister of old dreams.

And each fair altar, like a priest, I'd tend,
Trimming the tapers to a constant blaze,
And to each lovely and beloved friend
Garlands I'd bring, and virginal soft sprays
From April's bodice, and moon-breasted May's,
And there should be a sound for ever of streams
And birds 'mid happy leaves in that still place, -
Kneeling within that cloister of old dreams.

O'er missals of hushed memories would I ben...

I struck you once, I do remember well.
        Hard on the track of passion sorrow sped,
And swift repentance, weeping for the blow;
        I struck you once-and now you’re lying dead!

Now you are gone the blow no longer sleeps
        In your forgiveness hushed through all the years;
But like a phantom haunts me through the dark,
        To cry “You gave your own belovèd tears.”

Stript now of all excuses, stern and stark,
        With all your small transgressings dimmed or fled,
The ghost returns the blow upon my heart
        I struck you once-and now you’re lying dead.

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a gray shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred morns had flowered red,
Feasted and wept the barrows of his d...

    Though I have found you like a snow-drop pale,
    On sunny days have found you weak and still,
    Though I have often held your girlish head
    Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill: -

    Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings
    I hide to-night like one small broken bird,
    So soothed I half-forget the world gone mad: -
    And all the winds of war are now unheard.

    My heaven-doubting pennons feel your hands
    With touch most delicate so circling round,
    That for an hour I dream that God is good.
    And in your shadow, Mercy's ways abound.

    I thought myself the guard of your frail state,
    And yet I come to-night a helpless guest,
    Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings,
    Against the pallor of your wondrous...

He sat by me in school. His face is now
Vividly in my mind, as if he went
From me but yesterday - its pleasant smile
And the rich, joyous laughter of his eye,
And the free play of his unhaughty lip,
So redolent of his heart! He was not fair,
Nor singular, nor over-fond of books,
And never melancholy when alone.
He was the heartiest in the ring, the last
Home from the summer's wanderings, and the first
Over the threshold when the school was done.
All of us loved him. We shall speak his name
In the far years to come, and think of him
When we have lost life's simplest passages,
And pray for him - forgetting he is dead -
Life was in him so passing beautiful!

His childhood had been wasted in the close
And airless city. He had never thought
That the ...

I think to-night I could bear it all,
Even the arrow that cleft the core,
Could I wait again for your swift footfall,
And your sunny face coming in at the door.
With the old frank look and the gay young smile,
And the ring of the words you used to say;
I could almost deem the pain worth while,
To greet you again in the olden way!

But you stand without in the dark and cold,
And I may not open the long closed door,
Nor call thro’ the night, with the love of old,
“Come into the warmth, as in nights of yore!”
I kneel alone in the red fire-glow,
And hear the wings of the wind sweep by;
You are out afar in the night, I know,
And the sough of the wind is like a cry.

You are out afar, and I wait within,
A grave-eyed woman whose pulse is slow;
The...

Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods.
Swift rush the spectral vapours white
Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing then blotting from our sight!
Halt through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.
Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher
Mounts up the stony f...

The house was crammed from roof to floor,
Heads piled on heads at every door;
Half dead with August's seething heat
I crowded on and found my seat,
My patience slightly out of joint,
My temper short of boiling-point,
Not quite at Hate mankind as such,
Nor yet at Love them overmuch.

Amidst the throng the pageant drew
Were gathered Hebrews not a few,
Black-bearded, swarthy, - at their side
Dark, jewelled women, orient-eyed:
If scarce a Christian hopes for grace
Who crowds one in his narrow place,
What will the savage victim do
Whose ribs are kneaded by a Jew?

Next on my left a breathing form
Wedged up against me, close and warm;
The beak that crowned the bistred face
Betrayed the mould of Abraham's race, -
That coal-...

Though o'er the darksome northern hill
Old ambush'd winter frowning flies,
And faintly drifts his threatenings still
In snowy sweet and blackening skies;
Yet here the willow leaning lies
And shields beneath the budding flower,
Where banks to break the wind arise,
'Tis sweet to sit and spend an hour.

Though floods of winter bustling fall
Adown the arches bleak and blea,
Though snow-storms clothe the mossy wall,
And hourly whiten o'er the lea;
Yet when from clouds the sun is free
And warms the learning bird to sing,
'Neath sloping bank and sheltering tree
'Tis sweet to watch the creeping spring.

Though still so early, one may spy
And track her footsteps every hour;
The daisy with its golden eye,
And primrose bursting into flower;
...

1

The chestnut steed stood by the gate
His noble master's will to wait,
The woody park so green and bright
Was glowing in the morning light,
The young leaves of the aspen trees
Were dancing in the morning breeze.
The palace door was open wide,
Its lord was standing there,
And his sweet lady by his side
With soft dark eyes and raven hair.
He smiling took her wary hand
And said, 'No longer here I stand;
My charger shakes his flowing mane
And calls me with impatient neigh.
Adieu then till we meet again,
Sweet love, I must no longer stay.'

2

'You must not go so soon,' she said,
'I will not say farewell.
The sun has not dispelled the shade
In yonder dewy dell;
Dark shadows of gigantic length
Are sleeping on the l...

When cold in the earth lies the friend thou hast loved,
    Be his faults and his follies forgot by thee then;
Or, if from their slumber the veil be removed,
    Weep o'er them in silence, and close it again.
And oh! if 'tis pain to remember how far
    From the pathways of light he was tempted to roam,
Be it bliss to remember that thou wert the star
    That arose on his darkness and guided him home.

From thee and thy innocent beauty first came
    The revealings, that taught him true love to adore,
To feel the bright presence, and turn him with shame
    From the idols he blindly had knelt to before.
O'er the waves of a life, long benighted and wild,
    Thou camest, like a soft golden calm o'er the sea;
And if happiness purely and glowingly smiled
    On h...

They stood at the garden gate.
    By the lifting of a lid
She might have read her fate
    In a little thing he did.

He plucked a beautiful flower;
    Tore it away from its place
On the side of the blooming bower;
    And held it against his face.

Drank in its beauty and bloom,
    In the midst of his idle talk;
Then cast it down to the gloom
    And dust of the garden walk.

Ay, trod it under his foot,
    As it lay in his pathway there;
Then spurned it away with his boot,
    Because it bad ceased to be fair.

Ah! the maiden might have read
    The doom of her young life then;
But she looked in his eyes instead,
    And thought him the king of men.

She looked in his eyes and blushed,
    She hid in his s...

Dearer to me, thou pile of dust!
Tho' with the wild flow'r simply crown'd,
Than the vast dome or beauteous bust,
By genius form'd, by wit renown'd.

Wave, thou wild flow'r! for ever wave,
O'er my lov'd relic of delight;
My tears shall bathe her green-rob'd grave
More than the dews of heav'n by night.

Methinks my Delia bids me go,
Says, "Florio, dry that fruitless tear!
Feed not a wild flow'r with thy woe,
Thy long-lov'd Delia is not here.

"No drop of feeling from her eye
Now starts to hear thy sorrows speak;
And, did thy bosom know one joy,
No smile would bloom upon her cheek.

"Pale, wan, and torpid, droops that cheek,
Whereon thy lip impress'd its red;
Those eyes, which Florio taught to speak,
Unnotic'd close amid the dea...