Betrayal

    When I lie musing on my bed alone,
    And listen to the wintry waterfall;[1]
    And many moments that are past and gone,
    Moments of sunshine and of joy, recall;

    Though the long night is dark and damp around,
    And no still star hangs out its friendly flame;
    And the winds sweep the sash with sullen sound,
    And freezing palsy creeps o'er all my frame;

    I catch consoling phantasies that spring
    From the thick gloom, and as the night airs beat,
    They touch my heart, like wind-swift wires[2] that ring
    In mournful modulations, strange and sweet.

    Was it the voice of thee, my buried friend?
    Was it the whispered vow of faithful love?
    Do I in Knoyle's green shades thy steps attend,
    An...

I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
In deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?

I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise, but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.

I took her dainty eyes, as well
As silken tendrils of her hair:
And so I made a Villanelle!

I took her voice, a silver bell,
As clear as song, as soft as prayer;
I took her dainty eyes as well.

It may be, said I, who can tell,
These things shall be my less despair?
And so I made a Villanelle!

I took her whiteness virginal
And from her cheek two roses rare:
I took her dainty eyes as well.

I said: "It may be possible
Her image from my heart to tear!"
And so I made a Villanelle.

I stole her laugh, most musical:
I wrought it in with artful care;
I took her dainty eyes as well;
And so I made a Villanelle.

I.
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.

II.
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
You heard music; that was I.

III.
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning! where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.

IV.
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing’s best was done,
To my lute I left the rest.

V.
So wore night; the East was gray,
...

Dark creeping Ivy, with thy berries brown,
That fondly twists' on ruins all thine own,
Old spire-points studding with a leafy crown
Which every minute threatens to dethrone;
With fearful eye I view thy height sublime,
And oft with quicker step retreat from thence
Where thou, in weak defiance, striv'st with Time,
And holdst his weapons in a dread suspense.
But, bloom of ruins, thou art dear to me,
When, far from danger's way, thy gloomy pride
Wreathes picturesque around some ancient tree
That bows his branches by some fountain-side:
Then sweet it is from summer suns to be,
With thy green darkness overshadowing me.

Sweet lady, look not thus again:
    Those bright, deluding smiles recall
A maid remember'd now with pain,
    Who was my love, my life, my all!

Oh! while this heart bewildered took
    Sweet poison from her thrilling eye,
Thus would she smile and lisp and look,
    And I would hear and gaze and sigh!

Yes, I did love her--wildly love--
    She was her sex's best deceiver!
And oft she swore she'd never rove--
    And I was destined to believe her!

Then, lady, do not wear the smile
    Of one whose smile could thus betray;
Alas! I think the lovely wile
    Again could steal my heart away.

For, when those spells that charmed my mind
    On lips so pure as thine I see,
I fear the heart which she resigned
    Will err again an...

I saw her crop a rose
Right early in the day,
And I went to kiss the place
Where she broke the rose away
And I saw the patten rings
Where she oer the stile had gone,
And I love all other things
Her bright eyes look upon.
If she looks upon the hedge or up the leafing tree,
The whitethorn or the brown oak are made dearer things to me.

I have a pleasant hill
Which I sit upon for hours,
Where she cropt some sprigs of thyme
And other little flowers;
And she muttered as she did it
As does beauty in a dream,
And I loved her when she hid it
On her breast, so like to cream,
Near the brown mole on her neck that to me a diamond shone
Then my eye was like to fire, and my heart was like to stone.

There is a small green place
Where cowsl...

"Son of my buried Son, while thus thy hand"
"Is clasping mine, it saddens me to think"
"How Want may press thee down, and with thee sink"
"Thy children left unfit, through vain demand"
"Of culture, even to feel or understand"
"My simplest Lay that to their memory"
"May cling; hard fate! which haply need not be"
"Did Justice mould the statutes of the Land."
"A Book time-cherished and an honoured name"
"Are high rewards; but bound they Nature's claim"
"Or Reason's? No hopes spun in timid line"
"From out the bosom of a modest home"
"Extend through unambitious years to come,"
"My careless Little-one, for thee and thine!"

See you the towers, that, gray and old,
Frown through the sunlight's liquid gold,
Steep sternly fronting steep?
The Hellespont beneath them swells,
And roaring cleaves the Dardanelles,
The rock-gates of the deep!
Hear you the sea, whose stormy wave,
From Asia, Europe clove in thunder?
That sea which rent a world, cannot
Rend love from love asunder!

In Hero's, in Leander's heart,
Thrills the sweet anguish of the dart
Whose feather flies from love.
All Hebe's bloom in Hero's cheek
And his the hunter's steps that seek
Delight, the hills above!
Between their sires the rival feud
Forbids their plighted hearts to meet;
Love's fruits hang over danger's gulf,
By danger made more sweet.

Alone on Sestos' rocky tower,
Where upward sen...

    'Tis done!    Henceforth nor joy nor woe
        Can make or mar my fate;
    I gaze around, above, below,
        And all is desolate.
    Go, bid the shattered pine to bloom;
        The mourner to be merry;
    But bid no ray to cheer the tomb
        In which my hopes I bury!

    I never thought the world was fair;
        That 'Truth must reign victorious';
    I knew that Honesty was rare;
        Wealth only meritorious.
    I knew that Women might deceive,
        And sometimes cared for money;
    That Lovers who in Love believe
        Find gall as well as honey.

    I knew that "wondrous Classic lore"
        Meant something most pedantic;
    That Mathematics were a bore,
        And Morals un-romantic.<...

(In the south of Italy the peasants put out the eyes of a captured quail so that its cries may attract the flocks of spring migrants into their nets.)


All through the night
I have heard the stuttering call of a blind quail,
A caged decoy, under a cairn of stones,
Crying for light as the quails cry for love.

Other wanderers,
Northward from Africa winging on numb pinions, dazed
With beating winds and the sobbing of the sea,
Hear, in a breath of sweet land-herbage, the call
Of the blind one, their sister....
Hearing, their fluttered hearts
Take courage, and they wheel in their dark flight,
Knowing that their toil is over, dreaming to see
The white stubbles of Abruzzi smitten with dawn,
And spilt grain lying in the furrows, the squandered gold
That is...

O thou fayre siluer Thames: O cleerest chrystall flood,
Beta alone the Phenix is, of all thy watery brood,
        The Queene of Virgins onely she:
        And thou the Queene of floods shalt be:
Let all thy Nymphes be ioyfull then to see this happy day,
Thy Beta now alone shalbe the subiect of my laye.

With daintie and delightsome straines of sweetest virelayes:
Come louely shepheards sit we down and chant our Betas prayse:
        And let vs sing so rare a verse,
        Our Betas prayses to rehearse,
That little Birds shall silent be, to heare poore shepheards sing,
And riuers backward bend their course, and flow vnto the spring.

Range all thy swannes faire Thames together on a rancke,
And place them duely one by one, vpon thy stately banck,
        Then ...

How the wind howls this morn
About the end of May,
And drives June on apace
To mock the world forlorn
And the world's joy passed away
And my unlonged-for face!
The world's joy passed away;
For no more may I deem
That any folk are glad
To see the dawn of day
Sunder the tangled dream
Wherein no grief they had.
Ah, through the tangled dream
Where others have no grief
Ever it fares with me
That fears and treasons stream
And dumb sleep slays belief
Whatso therein may be.
Sleep slayeth all belief
Until the hopeless light
Wakes at the birth of June
More lying tales to weave,
More love in woe's despite,
More hope to perish soon.

When I go hence, ye Closet-Gods, I fear
Never again to have ingression here
Where I have had whatever thing could be
Pleasant and precious to my muse and me.
Besides rare sweets, I had a book which none
Could read the intext but myself alone.
About the cover of this book there went
A curious-comely clean compartlement,
And, in the midst, to grace it more, was set
A blushing, pretty, peeping rubelet.
But now 'tis closed; and being shut and seal'd,
Be it, O be it, never more reveal'd!
Keep here still, Closet-Gods, 'fore whom I've set
Oblations oft of sweetest marmelet.

1

Ah, heedless girl! why thus disclose
What ne'er was meant for other ears;
Why thus destroy thine own repose,
And dig the source of future tears?


2

Oh, thou wilt weep, imprudent maid,
While lurking envious foes will smile,
For all the follies thou hast said
Of those who spoke but to beguile.


3

Vain girl! thy lingering woes are nigh,
If thou believ'st what striplings say:
Oh, from the deep temptation fly,
Nor fall the specious spoiler's prey.


4

Dost thou repeat, in childish boast,
The words man utters to deceive?
Thy peace, thy hope, thy all is lost,
If thou canst venture to believe.


5

While now amongst thy female peers
Thou tell'st again the soothing ta...

    This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.


    To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend,
    As with the gentle fading of the year
    Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end
    Unquestioning draw near,
    Their flowering over, and their fruiting done,
    Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.

    But for June's heart there is no comforting
    When her full-throated rose
    Still quick with buds, still thrilling to the air,
    By some stray wind is tossed,
    Her swelling grain that goes
    Heavy to harvesting
    In a black gale is lost,
    And her round grape that purpled to the wine
    Is pinched by some chance frost.
    Ah, then cry out for that lost, lovely rose,
    For the stricken wheat, ...

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights
Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.

Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon!
Soon they returned, and after strange adventures,
Settled at Balham by the end of June,
Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures,
And in Antofagastas. Still he went
Cityward daily; still she did abide
At home. And both were really quite content
With work and social pleasures. Then they died.
They left three children (beside George, who drank);
The eldest Jane, who married Mr. Bell,
William, the head-clerk in the County Bank,
And Henry, a stock-broker, doing well.

I bore a daughter flower-fair,
In Pydel Vale, alas for me;
I joyed to mother one so rare,
But dead and gone I now would be.

Men looked and loved her as she grew,
And she was won, alas for me;
She told me nothing, but I knew,
And saw that sorrow was to be.

I knew that one had made her thrall,
A thrall to him, alas for me;
And then, at last, she told me all,
And wondered what her end would be.

She owned that she had loved too well,
Had loved too well, unhappy she,
And bore a secret time would tell,
Though in her shroud she'd sooner be.

I plodded to her sweetheart's door
In Pydel Vale, alas for me:
I pleaded with him, pleaded sore,
To save her from her misery.

He frowned, and swore he could not wed,
Seven tim...