TREACHERY TREACHERY
For always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known.
Good company in a journey makes the way
to seem the shorter.
All human race from China to Peru,
Pleasure, howe'er disguis'd by art, pursue.
The dust is old upon my "sandal-shoon,"
And still I am a pilgrim; I have roved
From wild America to Bosphor's waters,
And worshipp'd at innumerable shrines
Of beauty; and the painter's art, to me,
And sculpture, speak as with a living tongue,
And of dead kingdoms, I recall the soul,
Sitting amid their ruins.
TREACHERY; TREASON
Is there not some chosen ourse,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man
Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin?
Nemo unquam sapiens proditori credendum
putavit.
No wise man ever thought that a traitor
should be trusted.
This principle is old, but true as fate,
Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate.
Treason is not own'd when 'tis descried;
Successful crimes alone are justified.
O that a soldier so glorious, ever victorious in
fight,
Passed from a daylight of honor into the terrible night;
Fell as the mighty archangel, ere the earth
glowed in space, fell—
Fell from the patriot's heaven down to the loyalist's hell!
With evil omens from the harbour sails
The ill-fated ship that worthless Arnold bears;
God of the southern winds, call up thy gales,
And whistle in rude fury round his ears.
Rebellion must be managed with many swords;
treason to his prince's person may be with one knife.
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
Judas had given them the slip.
Tarquin and Csesar had each his Brutus—
Charles the First, his Cromwell—and George
the Third—("Treason!" shouted the Speaker)
may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.
The man who pauses on the paths of treason,
Halts on a quicksand, the first step engulfs him.
For while the treason I detest,
The traitor still I love.
Ipsa se fraus, etiamsi initio cautior fuerit, detegit.
Treachery, though at first very cautious, in
the end betrays itself.
The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed;
Man is more than Constitutions; better rot
beneath the sod,
Than be true to Church and State while we
are doubly false to God.
Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence
With vizor'd falsehood and base forgery?
Oh, colder than the wind that freezes
Founts, that but now in sunshine play'd,
Is that congealing pang which seizes
The trusting bosom, when betray'd.
Oh, for a tongue to curse the slave
Whose treason, like a deadly blight,
Comes o'er the councils of the brave,
And blasts them in their hour of might!
He [Caæsar] loved the treason, but hated the
traitor.