Written by
John Davidson |
'A letter from my love to-day!
Oh, unexpected, dear appeal!'
She struck a happy tear away,
And broke the crimson seal.
'My love, there is no help on earth,
No help in heaven; the dead-man's bell
Must toll our wedding; our first hearth
Must be the well-paved floor of hell.'
The colour died from out her face,
Her eyes like ghostly candles shone;
She cast dread looks about the place,
Then clenched her teeth and read right on.
'I may not pass the prison door;
Here must I rot from day to day,
Unless I wed whom I abhor,
My cousin, Blanche of Valencay.
'At midnight with my dagger keen,
I'll take my life; it must be so.
Meet me in hell to-night, my queen,
For weal and woe.'
She laughed although her face was wan,
She girded on her golden belt,
She took her jewelled ivory fan,
And at her glowing missal knelt.
Then rose, 'And am I mad?' she said:
She broke her fan, her belt untied;
With leather girt herself instead,
And stuck a dagger at her side.
She waited, shuddering in her room,
Till sleep had fallen on all the house.
She never flinched; she faced her doom:
They two must sin to keep their vows.
Then out into the night she went,
And, stooping, crept by hedge and tree;
Her rose-bush flung a snare of scent,
And caught a happy memory.
She fell, and lay a minute's space;
She tore the sward in her distress;
The dewy grass refreshed her face;
She rose and ran with lifted dress.
She started like a morn-caught ghost
Once when the moon came out and stood
To watch; the naked road she crossed,
And dived into the murmuring wood.
The branches snatched her streaming cloak;
A live thing shrieked; she made no stay!
She hurried to the trysting-oak—
Right well she knew the way.
Without a pause she bared her breast,
And drove her dagger home and fell,
And lay like one that takes her rest,
And died and wakened up in hell.
She bathed her spirit in the flame,
And near the centre took her post;
From all sides to her ears there came
The dreary anguish of the lost.
The devil started at her side,
Comely, and tall, and black as jet.
'I am young Malespina's bride;
Has he come hither yet?'
'My poppet, welcome to your bed.'
'Is Malespina here?'
'Not he! To-morrow he must wed
His cousin Blanche, my dear!'
'You lie, he died with me to-night.'
'Not he! it was a plot' ... 'You lie.'
'My dear, I never lie outright.'
'We died at midnight, he and I.'
The devil went. Without a groan
She, gathered up in one fierce prayer,
Took root in hell's midst all alone,
And waited for him there.
She dared to make herself at home
Amidst the wail, the uneasy stir.
The blood-stained flame that filled the dome,
Scentless and silent, shrouded her.
How long she stayed I cannot tell;
But when she felt his perfidy,
She marched across the floor of hell;
And all the damned stood up to see.
The devil stopped her at the brink:
She shook him off; she cried, 'Away!'
'My dear, you have gone mad, I think.'
'I was betrayed: I will not stay.'
Across the weltering deep she ran;
A stranger thing was never seen:
The damned stood silent to a man;
They saw the great gulf set between.
To her it seemed a meadow fair;
And flowers sprang up about her feet
She entered heaven; she climbed the stair
And knelt down at the mercy-seat.
Seraphs and saints with one great voice
Welcomed that soul that knew not fear.
Amazed to find it could rejoice,
Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.
|
Written by
Kenneth Slessor |
Time that is moved by little fidget wheels
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow.
Between the double and the single bell
Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells
From the dark warship riding there below,
I have lived many lives, and this one life
Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.
Deep and dissolving verticals of light
Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells
Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water
Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats
In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.
Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve
These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought
Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth,
Gone even from the meaning of a name;
Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips
And hits and cries against the ports of space,
Beating their sides to make its fury heard.
Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face
In agonies of speech on speechless panes?
Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!
But I hear nothing, nothing...only bells,
Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time.
Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life,
There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait -
Nothing except the memory of some bones
Long shoved away, and sucked away, in mud;
And unimportant things you might have done,
Or once I thought you did; but you forgot,
And all have now forgotten - looks and words
And slops of beer; your coat with buttons off,
Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales
Of Irish kings and English perfidy,
And dirtier perfidy of publicans
Groaning to God from Darlinghurst.
Five bells.
Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder
Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain
The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,
So dark you bore no body, had no face,
But a sheer voice that rattled out of air
(As now you'd cry if I could break the glass),
A voice that spoke beside me in the bush,
Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind,
Of Milton, melons, and the Rights of Man,
And blowing flutes, and how Tahitian girls
Are brown and angry-tongued, and Sydney girls
Are white and angry-tongued, or so you'd found.
But all I heard was words that didn't join
So Milton became melons, melons girls,
And fifty mouths, it seemed, were out that night,
And in each tree an Ear was bending down,
Or something that had just run, gone behind the grass,
When blank and bone-white, like a maniac's thought,
The naphtha-flash of lightning slit the sky,
Knifing the dark with deathly photographs.
There's not so many with so poor a purse
Or fierce a need, must fare by night like that,
Five miles in darkness on a country track,
But when you do, that's what you think.
Five bells.
In Melbourne, your appetite had gone,
Your angers too; they had been leeched away
By the soft archery of summer rains
And the sponge-paws of wetness, the slow damp
That stuck the leaves of living, snailed the mind,
And showed your bones, that had been sharp with rage,
The sodden ectasies of rectitude.
I thought of what you'd written in faint ink,
Your journal with the sawn-off lock, that stayed behind
With other things you left, all without use,
All without meaning now, except a sign
That someone had been living who now was dead:
"At Labassa. Room 6 x 8
On top of the tower; because of this, very dark
And cold in winter. Everything has been stowed
Into this room - 500 books all shapes
And colours, dealt across the floor
And over sills and on the laps of chairs;
Guns, photoes of many differant things
And differant curioes that I obtained..."
In Sydney, by the spent aquarium-flare
Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper,
We argued about blowing up the world,
But you were living backward, so each night
You crept a moment closer to the breast,
And they were living, all of them, those frames
And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth,
And most your father, the old man gone blind,
With fingers always round a fiddle's neck,
That graveyard mason whose fair monuments
And tablets cut with dreams of piety
Rest on the bosoms of a thousand men
Staked bone by bone, in quiet astonishment
At cargoes they had never thought to bear,
These funeral-cakes of sweet and sculptured stone.
Where have you gone? The tide is over you,
The turn of midnight water's over you,
As Time is over you, and mystery,
And memory, the flood that does not flow.
You have no suburb, like those easier dead
In private berths of dissolution laid -
The tide goes over, the waves ride over you
And let their shadows down like shining hair,
But they are Water; and the sea-pinks bend
Like lilies in your teeth, but they are Weed;
And you are only part of an Idea.
I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in,
The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack,
And the short agony, the longer dream,
The Nothing that was neither long nor short;
But I was bound, and could not go that way,
But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.
If I could find an answer, could only find
Your meaning, or could say why you were here
Who now are gone, what purpose gave you breath
Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice?
I looked out my window in the dark
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.
Five bells.
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
OPPRESS’D with grief, oppress’d with care,
A burden more than I can bear,
I set me down and sigh;
O life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I!
Dim backward as I cast my view,
What sick’ning scenes appear!
What sorrows yet may pierce me through,
Too justly I may fear!
Still caring, despairing,
Must be my bitter doom;
My woes here shall close ne’er
But with the closing tomb!
Happy! ye sons of busy life,
Who, equal to the bustling strife,
No other view regard!
Ev’n when the wished end’s denied,
Yet while the busy means are plied,
They bring their own reward:
Whilst I, a hope-abandon’d wight,
Unfitted with an aim,
Meet ev’ry sad returning night,
And joyless morn the same!
You, bustling, and justling,
Forget each grief and pain;
I, listless, yet restless,
Find ev’ry prospect vain.
How blest the solitary’s lot,
Who, all-forgetting, all forgot,
Within his humble cell,
The cavern, wild with tangling roots,
Sits o’er his newly gather’d fruits,
Beside his crystal well!
Or haply, to his ev’ning thought,
By unfrequented stream,
The ways of men are distant brought,
A faint, collected dream;
While praising, and raising
His thoughts to heav’n on high,
As wand’ring, meand’ring,
He views the solemn sky.
Than I, no lonely hermit plac’d
Where never human footstep trac’d,
Less fit to play the part,
The lucky moment to improve,
And just to stop, and just to move,
With self-respecting art:
But ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys,
Which I too keenly taste,
The solitary can despise,
Can want, and yet be blest!
He needs not, he heeds not,
Or human love or hate;
Whilst I here must cry here
At perfidy ingrate!
O, enviable, early days,
When dancing thoughtless pleasure’s maze,
To care, to guilt unknown!
How ill exchang’d for riper times,
To feel the follies, or the crimes,
Of others, or my own!
Ye tiny elves that guiltless sport,
Like linnets in the bush,
Ye little know the ills ye court,
When manhood is your wish!
The losses, the crosses,
That active man engage;
The fears all, the tears all,
Of dim declining age!
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
The Devil -- had he fidelity
Would be the best friend --
Because he has ability --
But Devils cannot mend --
Perfidy is the virtue
That would but he resign
The Devil -- without question
Were thoroughly divine
|
Written by
Charlotte Bronte |
NOT in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion ?
This, thy tenderness for me ?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me !
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I not deceive thee,
Even with friendship's gentle show.
Therefore, with impassive coldness
Have I ever met thy gaze;
Though, full oft, with daring boldness,
Thou thine eyes to mine didst raise.
Why that smile ? Thou now art deeming
This my coldness all untrue,
But a mask of frozen seeming,
Hiding secret fires from view.
Touch my hand, thou self-deceiver,
Naybe calm, for I am so:
Does it burn ? Does my lip quiver ?
Has mine eye a troubled glow ?
Canst thou call a moment's colour
To my foreheadto my cheek ?
Canst thou tinge their tranquil pallor
With one flattering, feverish streak?
Am I marble ? What ! no woman
Could so calm before thee stand ?
Nothing living, sentient, human,
Could so coldly take thy hand ?
Yesa sister might, a mother:
My good-will is sisterly:
Dream not, then, I strive to smother
Fires that inly burn for thee.
Rave not, rage not, wrath is fruitless,
Fury cannot change my mind;
I but deem the feeling rootless
Which so whirls in passion's wind.
Can I love ? Oh, deeplytruly
Warmlyfondlybut not thee;
And my love is answered duly,
With an equal energy.
Wouldst thou see thy rival ? Hasten,
Draw that curtain soft aside,
Look where yon thick branches chasten
Noon, with shades of eventide.
In that glade, where foliage blending
Forms a green arch overhead,
Sits thy rival thoughtful bending
O'er a stand with papers spread
Motionless, his fingers plying
That untired, unresting pen;
Time and tide unnoticed flying,
There he sitsthe first of men !
Man of conscienceman of reason;
Stern, perchance, but ever just;
Foe to falsehood, wrong, and treason,
Honour's shield, and virtue's trust !
Worker, thinker, firm defender
Of Heaven's truthman's liberty;
Soul of ironproof to slander,
Rock where founders tyranny.
Fame he seeks notbut full surely
She will seek him, in his home;
This I know, and wait securely
For the atoning hour to come.
To that man my faith is given,
Therefore, soldier, cease to sue;
While God reigns in earth and heaven,
I to him will still be true !
|
Written by
Thomas Hardy |
When battles were fought
With a chivalrous sense of should and ought,
In spirit men said,
"End we quick or dead,
Honour is some reward!
Let us fight fair -- for our own best or worst;
So, Gentlemen of the Guard,
Fire first!"
In the open they stood,
Man to man in his knightlihood:
They would not deign
To profit by a stain
On the honourable rules,
Knowing that practise perfidy no man durst
Who in the heroic schools
Was nurst.
But now, behold, what
Is war with those where honour is not!
Rama laments
Its dead innocents;
Herod howls: "Sly slaughter
Rules now! Let us, by modes once called accurst,
Overhead, under water,
Stab first."
|
Written by
Francesco Petrarch |
[Pg 124] CANZONE XVI. Italia mia, benchè 'l parlar sia indarno. TO THE PRINCES OF ITALY, EXHORTING THEM TO SET HER FREE. O my own Italy! though words are vainThe mortal wounds to close,Unnumber'd, that thy beauteous bosom stain,Yet may it soothe my painTo sigh forth Tyber's woes,And Arno's wrongs, as on Po's sadden'd shoreSorrowing I wander, and my numbers pour.Ruler of heaven! By the all-pitying loveThat could thy Godhead moveTo dwell a lowly sojourner on earth,Turn, Lord! on this thy chosen land thine eye:See, God of Charity!From what light cause this cruel war has birth;And the hard hearts by savage discord steel'd,Thou, Father! from on high,Touch by my humble voice, that stubborn wrath may yield! Ye, to whose sovereign hands the fates confideOf this fair land the reins,—(This land for which no pity wrings your breast)—Why does the stranger's sword her plains invest?That her green fields be dyed,Hope ye, with blood from the Barbarians' veins?Beguiled by error weak,Ye see not, though to pierce so deep ye boast,Who love, or faith, in venal bosoms seek:When throng'd your standards most,Ye are encompass'd most by hostile bands.O hideous deluge gather'd in strange lands,That rushing down amainO'erwhelms our every native lovely plain!Alas! if our own handsHave thus our weal betray'd, who shall our cause sustain? Well did kind Nature, guardian of our state,Rear her rude Alpine heights,A lofty rampart against German hate;But blind ambition, seeking his own ill,[Pg 125]With ever restless will,To the pure gales contagion foul invites:Within the same strait foldThe gentle flocks and wolves relentless throng,Where still meek innocence must suffer wrong:And these,—oh, shame avow'd!—Are of the lawless hordes no tie can hold:Fame tells how Marius' swordErewhile their bosoms gored,—Nor has Time's hand aught blurr'd the record proud!When they who, thirsting, stoop'd to quaff the flood,With the cool waters mix'd, drank of a comrade's blood! Great Cæsar's name I pass, who o'er our plainsPour'd forth the ensanguin'd tide,Drawn by our own good swords from out their veins;But now—nor know I what ill stars preside—Heaven holds this land in hate!To you the thanks!—whose hands control her helm!—You, whose rash feuds despoilOf all the beauteous earth the fairest realm!Are ye impell'd by judgment, crime, or fate,To oppress the desolate?From broken fortunes, and from humble toil,The hard-earn'd dole to wring,While from afar ye bringDealers in blood, bartering their souls for hire?In truth's great cause I sing.Nor hatred nor disdain my earnest lay inspire. Nor mark ye yet, confirm'd by proof on proof,Bavaria's perfidy,Who strikes in mockery, keeping death aloof?(Shame, worse than aught of loss, in honour's eye!)While ye, with honest rage, devoted pourYour inmost bosom's gore!—Yet give one hour to thought,And ye shall own, how little he can holdAnother's glory dear, who sets his own at noughtO Latin blood of old!Arise, and wrest from obloquy thy fame,Nor bow before a name[Pg 126]Of hollow sound, whose power no laws enforce!For if barbarians rudeHave higher minds subdued,Ours! ours the crime!—not such wise Nature's course. Ah! is not this the soil my foot first press'd?And here, in cradled rest,Was I not softly hush'd?—here fondly rear'd?Ah! is not this my country?—so endear'dBy every filial tie!In whose lap shrouded both my parents lie!Oh! by this tender thought,Your torpid bosoms to compassion wrought,Look on the people's grief!Who, after God, of you expect relief;And if ye but relent,Virtue shall rouse her in embattled might,Against blind fury bent,Nor long shall doubtful hang the unequal fight;For no,—the ancient flameIs not extinguish'd yet, that raised the Italian name! Mark, sovereign Lords! how Time, with pinion strong,Swift hurries life along!E'en now, behold! Death presses on the rear.We sojourn here a day—the next, are gone!The soul disrobed—alone,Must shuddering seek the doubtful pass we fear.Oh! at the dreaded bourne,Abase the lofty brow of wrath and scorn,(Storms adverse to the eternal calm on high!)And ye, whose crueltyHas sought another's harm, by fairer deedOf heart, or hand, or intellect, aspireTo win the honest meedOf just renown—the noble mind's desire!Thus sweet on earth the stay!Thus to the spirit pure, unbarr'd is Heaven's way! My song! with courtesy, and numbers sooth,Thy daring reasons grace,For thou the mighty, in their pride of place,Must woo to gentle ruth,[Pg 127]Whose haughty will long evil customs nurse,Ever to truth averse!Thee better fortunes wait,Among the virtuous few—the truly great!Tell them—but who shall bid my terrors cease?Peace! Peace! on thee I call! return, O heaven-born Peace! Dacre.
See Time, that flies, and spreads his hasty wing!See Life, how swift it runs the race of years,And on its weary shoulders death appears!Now all is life and all is spring:Think on the winter and the darker dayWhen the soul, naked and alone,Must prove the dubious step, the still unknown,Yet ever beaten way.And through this fatal valeWould you be wafted with some gentle gale?Put off that eager strife and fierce disdain,Clouds that involve our life's serene,And storms that ruffle all the scene;Your precious hours, misspent in others' pain,On nobler deeds, worthy yourselves, bestow;Whether with hand or wit you raiseSome monument of peaceful praise,Some happy labour of fair love:'Tis all of heaven that you can find below,And opens into all above. Basil Kennet.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away --
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy --
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon --
The Dusk drew earlier in --
The Morning foreign shone --
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone --
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
The healed Heart shows its shallow scar
With confidential moan --
Not mended by Mortality
Are Fabrics truly torn --
To go its convalescent way
So shameless is to see
More genuine were Perfidy
Than such Fidelity.
|
Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Sweet Pirate of the heart,
Not Pirate of the Sea,
What wrecketh thee?
Some spice's Mutiny --
Some Attar's perfidy?
Confide in me.
|