Betrayal Poems

Table of Contents

1. I Had a Guinea Golden

   by Emily Dickinson

   
   

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   I had a guinea golden;
   I lost it in the sand,
   And though the sum was simple,
   And pounds were in the land,
   Still had it such a value
   Unto my frugal eye,
   That when I could not find it
   I sat me down to sigh.
   

   I had a crimson robin
   Who sang full many a day,
   But when the woods were painted
   He, too, did fly away.
   Time brought me other robins, —
   Their ballads were the same, —
   Still for my missing troubadour
   I kept the 'house at hame.'
   

   I had a star in heaven;
   One Pleiad was its name,
   And when I was not heeding
   It wandered from the same.
   And though the skies are crowded,
   And all the night ashine,
   I do not care about it,
   Since none of them are mine.
   

   My story has a moral:
   I have a missing friend, —
   Pleiad its name, and robin,
   And guinea in the sand, —
   And when this mournful ditty,
   Accompanied with tear,
   Shall meet the eye of traitor
   In country far from here,
   Grant that repentance solemn
   May seize upon his mind,
   And he no consolation
   Beneath the sun may find.
   

2. Deceit

   by Raymond Garfield Dandridge

   No venomous cobra's stab e'er stung,
   Like nectared lies on a false friend's tongue.
   

   Better by far the deadliest foe
   Who does not fail to let you know
   

   He is your foe, nor does it smart
   As badly, when he rends your heart.
   

3. To an Unhanged Judas

   by Raymond Garfield Dandridge

   
   

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   Cannibalistic vulture,
   Grown fat upon your brother's blood,
   The Tide you do not seek to stem
   Engulfs you in its flood.
   

   The cords you bind about his hands,
   Hold your hands doubly fast;
   And when you rend his anchor chain,
   Your bark adrift you cast.
   

   The day you snuff his light of hope,
   And dim ambition's guiding spark,
   You doom yourself to ever grope
   In tractless waste of endless dark.
   

   O! blasphemer of sacred trust,
   Go hide your dirty, double face!
   Far better were you dead at birth
   Than live to sacrifice your Race.
   

   Vile cringing cur, unfit to hang,
   Live long to writhe in pain
   Beneath on-marching feet of those
   Who fall—to rise again.
   

4. Don't Stab Him In the Back

   by Virgil Viraldini Twitchell

   
   

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   If you have a grudge against a man—some fancied wrong—you blame,
   Would it not be far better to face him with the same,
   Than to follow him in silence, like a blood-hound on a track,
   And when you get him cornered to stab him in the back?
   

   Perhaps you may be sensitive, and think because you've erred,
   Your friend has ceased to love you—your heart is strangely stirred,
   When you're the one that's kicking like an enraged jumping-jack,
   And before you are aware of it you've stabbed him in the back.
   

   We do not moan you've struck a blow in anger or in strife,
   With a sharp-pointed dagger or a murderer's keen knife,
   But in your exasperation, by some sleight-handed knack,
   Your tongue was used, instead thereof, to stab him in the back.
   

   If you would be more merciful to all, be kind and true,
   You must try to do by others as you'd have them do by you,
   And if a friend unthinkingly should give your nose a whack,
   Just hit him square between the eyes—don't stab him in the back.
   

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