 | The Poems of Sir William Watson |  |
SONNETS
19
THE FRONTIER
At the hushed brink of twilight—when, as though
Some solemn journeying phantom paused to lay
An ominous finger on the awestruck day,
Earth holds her breath till that great presence go—
A moment comes of visionary glow,
Pendulous 'twixt the gold hour and the grey,
Lovelier than these, more eloquent than they
Of memory, foresight, and life's ebb and flow.
Some solemn journeying phantom paused to lay
An ominous finger on the awestruck day,
Earth holds her breath till that great presence go—
A moment comes of visionary glow,
Pendulous 'twixt the gold hour and the grey,
Lovelier than these, more eloquent than they
Of memory, foresight, and life's ebb and flow.
So have I known, in some fair woman's face,
While viewless yet was Time's more cruel imprint,
The first, faint, hesitant, elusive hint
Of any invasion by the vandal years
Seem deeper beauty than youth's cloudless grace,
Wake subtler dreams, and touch me nigh to tears.
While viewless yet was Time's more cruel imprint,
The first, faint, hesitant, elusive hint
Of any invasion by the vandal years
Seem deeper beauty than youth's cloudless grace,
Wake subtler dreams, and touch me nigh to tears.
TO A FRIEND UNITING ANTIQUARIAN TASTES WITH PROGRESSIVE POLITICS
True lover of the Past, who dost not scorn
To give good heed to what the Future saith,—
Drinking the air of two worlds at a breath,
Thou livest not alone in thoughts outworn,
But ever helpest the new time be born,
Though with a sigh for the old order's death;
As clouds that crown the night that perisheth
Aid in the high solemnities of morn.
To give good heed to what the Future saith,—
Drinking the air of two worlds at a breath,
Thou livest not alone in thoughts outworn,
But ever helpest the new time be born,
Though with a sigh for the old order's death;
As clouds that crown the night that perisheth
Aid in the high solemnities of morn.
Guests of the ages, at To-morrow's door
Why shrink we? The long track behind us lies,
The lamps gleam and the music throbs before,
Bidding us enter: and I count him wise,
Who loves so well Man's noble memories
He needs must love Man's nobler hopes yet more.
Why shrink we? The long track behind us lies,
The lamps gleam and the music throbs before,
Bidding us enter: and I count him wise,
Who loves so well Man's noble memories
He needs must love Man's nobler hopes yet more.
20
AT THE SEASON'S END
A few more days in this unkind July,
This moon of stormy countenance livid and wan,
And you will hence have journeyed to put on
The moors and mountains like a robe laid by
And brought forth dipped in Nature's Tyrian dye.
For me, here lingering where your light hath shone,
A glamour will have passed, a witchery gone,
A vapid earth will wear a vacant sky.
This moon of stormy countenance livid and wan,
And you will hence have journeyed to put on
The moors and mountains like a robe laid by
And brought forth dipped in Nature's Tyrian dye.
For me, here lingering where your light hath shone,
A glamour will have passed, a witchery gone,
A vapid earth will wear a vacant sky.
Yet none the less our London as of old
Will throb with passionate heart-beats day by day,
And tower and spire will catch the dear last ray
Of suns that bid adieu with kiss of gold:
Thames will roll on, as long ago he rolled:
But 'mid wild glens you will be far away.
Will throb with passionate heart-beats day by day,
And tower and spire will catch the dear last ray
Of suns that bid adieu with kiss of gold:
Thames will roll on, as long ago he rolled:
But 'mid wild glens you will be far away.
HISTORY
Darkly, as by some gloomèd mirror glassed,
Herein at times the brooding eye beholds
The great scarred visage of the pompous Past,
But oftener only the embroidered folds
And soiled regality of his rent robe,
Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties
And cumber with their trailing pride the globe,
And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes;
Herein at times the brooding eye beholds
The great scarred visage of the pompous Past,
But oftener only the embroidered folds
And soiled regality of his rent robe,
Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties
And cumber with their trailing pride the globe,
And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes;
Till the world seems a world of husks and bones
Where sightless seers and immortals dead,
Kings that remember not their awful thrones,
Invincible armies long since vanquishèd,
And powerless potentates and foolish sages
Lie 'mid the crumbling of the mossy ages.
Where sightless seers and immortals dead,
Kings that remember not their awful thrones,
Invincible armies long since vanquishèd,
And powerless potentates and foolish sages
Lie 'mid the crumbling of the mossy ages.
21
VOICE AND VISION
If I had never known your face at all,
Had only heard you speak, beyond thick screen
Of leaves, in an old garden, when the sheen
Of morning dwelt on dial and ivied wall,
I think your voice had been enough to call
Yourself before me, in living vision seen,
So pregnant with your Essence had it been,
So charged with You, in each soft rise and fall.
Had only heard you speak, beyond thick screen
Of leaves, in an old garden, when the sheen
Of morning dwelt on dial and ivied wall,
I think your voice had been enough to call
Yourself before me, in living vision seen,
So pregnant with your Essence had it been,
So charged with You, in each soft rise and fall.
At least I know, that when upon the night
With chanted word your voice lets loose your soul,
I am stricken and pierced and cloven with Delight
That hath all Pain within it, and the whole
World's tears; all ecstasy of inward sight;
And the blind cry of all the seas that roll.
With chanted word your voice lets loose your soul,
I am stricken and pierced and cloven with Delight
That hath all Pain within it, and the whole
World's tears; all ecstasy of inward sight;
And the blind cry of all the seas that roll.
22
THE IDEAL POPULAR LEADER
He is one who counts no public toil so hardAs idly glittering pleasures; one controlled
By no mob's haste, nor swayed by gods of gold;
Prizing, not courting, all just men's regard;
With none but Manhood's ancient Order starred,
Nor crowned with titles less august and old
Than human greatness; large-brained, limpid-souled;
Whom dreams can hurry not, nor doubts retard;
Born, nurtured of the People; living still
The People's life; and though their noblest flower,
In nought removed above them, save alone
In loftier virtue, wisdom, courage, power,
The ampler vision, the serener will,
And the fixed mind, to no light dallyings prone.
LA HAUTE POLITIQUE
I sailed in fancy by a beach of gold,
Toward a golden city like a star,
That quivered on the morning from afar—
Turrets and domes and airy spires untold.
But when I neared the marble quays, behold,
Offal and ordure; lurking Shames, that mar
The affronted sunlight; Plagues that deadliest are;
And ancient Tribulations manifold.
Toward a golden city like a star,
That quivered on the morning from afar—
Turrets and domes and airy spires untold.
But when I neared the marble quays, behold,
Offal and ordure; lurking Shames, that mar
The affronted sunlight; Plagues that deadliest are;
And ancient Tribulations manifold.
So fair, so foul, I said, the craft of State!
Such is the glory, such the light that clings
About the footsteps and the deeds of kings;
And in the shadow Terror sits, and Hate;
The lazars crouch, the bravo lies in wait;
And mocked is heaven with all unheavenly things.
Such is the glory, such the light that clings
About the footsteps and the deeds of kings;
And in the shadow Terror sits, and Hate;
The lazars crouch, the bravo lies in wait;
And mocked is heaven with all unheavenly things.
23
THE MODERN SADNESS
Old Chaucer, the unconquerably young,
Methought thou camest by, and didst incline
An ear to these poor fitful notes of mine,
And didst reprove, albeit with gentle tongue,
A lyre to joyous mood so seldom strung—
So little vowed to laughter or the vine,
Or her that rose a goddess from the brine,
Mother of half the songs the world hath sung.
Methought thou camest by, and didst incline
An ear to these poor fitful notes of mine,
And didst reprove, albeit with gentle tongue,
A lyre to joyous mood so seldom strung—
So little vowed to laughter or the vine,
Or her that rose a goddess from the brine,
Mother of half the songs the world hath sung.
Blandly arraigning ghost! 'tis all too true,—
A want of joy doth in these strings reside;
Some shade, that troubled not thy clearer day,
Some loss, nor thou nor thy Boccaccio knew.
For thou art of the morning and the May—
I of the autumn and the eventide.
A want of joy doth in these strings reside;
Some shade, that troubled not thy clearer day,
Some loss, nor thou nor thy Boccaccio knew.
For thou art of the morning and the May—
I of the autumn and the eventide.
NIGHTMARE
In a false dream I saw the Foe prevail.The war was ended; the last smoke had rolled
Away: and we, erewhile the strong and bold,
Stood broken, humbled, withered, weak, and pale,
And moaned: “Our greatness is become a tale
To tell our children's babes when we are old.
They shall put by their playthings to be told
How England once, before the years of bale,
Throned above trembling, puissant, grandiose, calm,
Held Asia's richest jewel in her palm;
And with unnumbered isles barbaric, she
The broad hem of her glistening robe impearled;
Then, when she wound her arms about the world,
And had for vassal the obsequious sea.”
24
TO ONE WHO ACCUSED ME OF POLITICAL APOSTASY
When reek of massacre filled the eastern skies,Who among singers sang for Man but me?
These lute-strings were a scourge to tyranny
When you turned listless from those anguished cries.
A hundred times, when all the worldly-wise
Kept comfortable silence, I spoke free.
And would you now begrudge me liberty
To use my own brain, see with my own eyes?
When you hung rearward, I was in the van,
Among the whizzing arrows; and to-day,
Because in one thing I reshape my creed,
You cry “Apostate!”—Liberalism indeed!
Give me the Liberalism that guards for Man
His right to think his thought and say his say.
FRANCE
Light-hearted heroine of tragic story!Nation whom storm on storm of ruining fate
Unruined leaves—nay, fairer, more elate,
Hungrier for action, more athirst for glory!
World-witching queen, from fiery floods and gory
Rising eternally regenerate,
Clothed with great deeds and crowned with dreams more great,
Spacious as Fancy's boundless territory!
Little thou lov'st our island, and perchance
Thou heed'st as little her reluctant praise;
Yet let her, in these dark and bodeful days,
Sinking old hatreds 'neath the sundering brine,
Immortal and indomitable France,
Marry her tears, her alien tears, to thine.
25
TO ONE ESPOUSING UNPOPULAR TRUTH
Not yet, dejected though thy cause, despair,Nor doubt of Dawn for all her laggard wing.
In shrewdest March the earth was mellowing,
And had conceived the Summer unaware.
With delicate ministration, as of the air,
The sovereign forces that conspire to bring
Light out of darkness, out of Winter, Spring,
Perform unseen their tasks benign and fair.
The sower soweth seed o'er vale and hill,
And long the folded life waits to be born;
Yet hath it never slept, nor once been still:
And clouds and suns have served it night and morn;
The winds are of its secret council sworn;
And Time and nurturing Silence work its will.
CHRISTMAS DAY
The morn broke bright: the thronging people wore
Their best; but in the general face I saw
No touch of veneration or of awe.
Christ's natal day? 'Twas merely one day more
On which the mart agreed to close its door;
A lounging-time by usage and by law
Sanctioned; nor recked they, beyond this, one straw
Of any meaning which for man it bore!
Their best; but in the general face I saw
No touch of veneration or of awe.
Christ's natal day? 'Twas merely one day more
On which the mart agreed to close its door;
A lounging-time by usage and by law
Sanctioned; nor recked they, beyond this, one straw
Of any meaning which for man it bore!
Fated among Time's fallen leaves to stray,
We breathe an air that savours of the tomb,
Heavy with dissolution and decay;
Waiting till some new world-emotion rise,
And with the might of the unchained simoom
Sweep hence this dying Past that never dies.
We breathe an air that savours of the tomb,
Heavy with dissolution and decay;
Waiting till some new world-emotion rise,
And with the might of the unchained simoom
Sweep hence this dying Past that never dies.
1893
26
TO AN AMERICAN POET
Take, Poet, take these thanks too long deferred—You that have made me richer year by year,
Across the vast and desert waters drear
Wafting your marriage-chimes of thought and word,
Your true-born, truthful songs. Not April bird
Utters abroad his wisdom morning-clear
From fuller heart. Still sing with note sincere,
And English pure as English air hath heard.
And so, though all the fops of style misuse
Our great brave language—tricking out with beads
This noble vesture that no frippery needs—
Help still to save, while Time around him strews
Old shards of empire, and much dust of creeds,
The honour and the glory of the muse.
1907
THE MOUNTAIN RAPTURE
Contentment have I known in lowlands green;A quiet heart by mead and lisping rill;
But joy was with me on the cloven hill,
And in the pass where strife of gods hath been;—
Visible, there, is the ecstasy terrene
Whence leapt the cataracts; there may whoso will
Watch the primeval paroxysm that still
Writhes on the countenance of the seared ravine,
These peaks that out of Earth's great passions rose,
Wearing the script of rage, the graven pang,
The adamantine legend of her throes,—
These are her lyric transports! thus she sang,
With wild improvisation—thus, with clang
Of fiery heavings, throbbed into repose.
27
THE ENGLISH DEAD
Give honour to our heroes fall'n, while stillDark on the desert the red war-stains lie.
Honour to him, the untimely struck, whom high
In men's salutes and praises 'twas Fate's will
With tedious pain unsplendidly to kill.
Honour to him, doom'd splendidly to die,
Child of the city whose foster-child am I,
Who hotly leading up the ensanguin'd hill
His charging thousand, fell without a word;
Fell, but shall fall not from our memory.
Also for them let honour's voice be heard
Who nameless sleep, while dull Time covereth
With no illustrious shade of laurel tree,
But with the poppy alone, their deeds and death.
GLADSTONE, 1885
This sonnet and the one immediately following it are likely to surprise some readers as being strangely at variance with each other in their language regarding a famous statesman. The reader is, however, requested to bear in mind that the two poems are separated by eleven years and much history.
Who scann'd the nation's every outward part
But ah! misheard the beating of its heart.
Sire of huge sorrows, yet erect of soul.
Swift rider with calamity for goal,
Who, overtasking his equestrian art,
Unstall'd a steed full willing for the start,
But wondrous hard to curb or to control.
Sometimes we thought he led the people forth:
Anon he seemed to follow where they flew:
Lord of the golden tongue and smiting eyes;
Great out of season and untimely wise:
A man whose virtue, genius, grandeur, worth,
Wrought deadlier ill than ages can undo.
28
MELANCHOLIA
In the cold starlight, on the barren beach,Where to the stones the rent sea-tresses clave,
I heard the long hiss of the backward wave
Down the steep shingle, and the hollow speech
Or murmurous cavern-lips, nor other breach
Of ancient silence. None was with me, save
Thoughts that were neither glad nor sweet nor brave,
But restless comrades, each the foe of each.
And I beheld the waters in their might
Writhe as a dragon by some great spell curbed
And foiled; and one lone sail; and over me
The everlasting taciturnity;
The august, inhospitable, inhuman night,
Glittering magnificently unperturbed.
1901
29
A DIZZYING SURMISE
What if that fieriest Substance—found so late—
That cousin to the uranium of the sun—
Were proved a cause of all that we have done
And dreamed and been? A source of love and hate,
Vileness and valour, and beauty nobly great!
What if all this, ere Nature had begun
Man's fashioning, lay closed and hidden in one
Miraculous God-sown seed of Life and Fate?
That cousin to the uranium of the sun—
Were proved a cause of all that we have done
And dreamed and been? A source of love and hate,
Vileness and valour, and beauty nobly great!
What if all this, ere Nature had begun
Man's fashioning, lay closed and hidden in one
Miraculous God-sown seed of Life and Fate?
Thus was the Genie of the Arabian tale
Sealed in a vial for a thousand years
Under the ocean, till a fisher's net
Drew forth the vial, and the fisher set
The captive free—but shrank amazed and pale,
When the loosed Afreet towered against the Spheres.
Sealed in a vial for a thousand years
Under the ocean, till a fisher's net
Drew forth the vial, and the fisher set
The captive free—but shrank amazed and pale,
When the loosed Afreet towered against the Spheres.
1909
NIGHT ON CURBAR EDGE
No echo of man's life pursues my ears;
Nothing disputes this Desolation's reign;
Change comes not this dread temple to profane,
Where time by æons reckons, not by years.
Its patient form one crag, sole stranded, rears,
Type of whate'er is destined to remain
While yon still host encamped on night's waste plain
Keeps armèd watch, a million glittering spears.
Nothing disputes this Desolation's reign;
Change comes not this dread temple to profane,
Where time by æons reckons, not by years.
Its patient form one crag, sole stranded, rears,
Type of whate'er is destined to remain
While yon still host encamped on night's waste plain
Keeps armèd watch, a million glittering spears.
Hushed are the wild and wing'd lives of the moor;
The sleeping sheep nestle 'neath ruined wall,
Or unhewn stones in random concourse hurled:
Solitude, sleepless, listens at Fate's door;
And there is built and 'stablisht over all,
Tremendous silence, older than the world.
The sleeping sheep nestle 'neath ruined wall,
Or unhewn stones in random concourse hurled:
Solitude, sleepless, listens at Fate's door;
And there is built and 'stablisht over all,
Tremendous silence, older than the world.
1894
30
ABDICATION
I think you never were of earthly frame,O truant from some charèd world unknown!
A fairy empress, you forsook your throne,
Fled your inviolate Court, and hither came;
Donned mortal vesture; wore a woman's name;
Like a mere woman, loved; and so are grown
At last a little human, save alone
For the wild elvish heart not Love could tame.
And one day I believe you will return
To your far isle amid the enchanted sea—
There, in your realm, perhaps remember me,
Perhaps forget: but I shall never learn!
I, loveless dust within a dreamless urn,
Dead to your beauty's immortality.
WRITTEN IN A COPY OF R.L. STEVENSON'S “CATRIONA”
Glorious Sir Walter, Shakespeare's brotherbrain,
Fortune's unvanquishable victim, Scott,
Mere lettered fame, 'tis said, esteeming not,
Save as it ministered to weightier gain,
Had yet his roseate dream, though dreamed in vain:
The dream, that, crowning his terrestrial lot,
A race and line, of his own blood begot,
In proud succession o'er Abbotsford should reign.
Fortune's unvanquishable victim, Scott,
Mere lettered fame, 'tis said, esteeming not,
Save as it ministered to weightier gain,
Had yet his roseate dream, though dreamed in vain:
The dream, that, crowning his terrestrial lot,
A race and line, of his own blood begot,
In proud succession o'er Abbotsford should reign.
The Fates forbade, but promised, in amends,
One mighty scion of his heart and mind;
And where strange isles the languorous ocean fleck—
Far from the cold kiss of our northern wind—
Sleeps the rare spirit through whom we hail as friends
The immortal Highland maid and Alan Breck!
One mighty scion of his heart and mind;
And where strange isles the languorous ocean fleck—
Far from the cold kiss of our northern wind—
Sleeps the rare spirit through whom we hail as friends
The immortal Highland maid and Alan Breck!
31
THE SLAIN
Partners in silence, mates in noteless doom,Peers in oblivion's commonalty merged;
Unto like deeds by differing mandates urged,
And equalled in the unrespective tomb;
Leal or perfidious, cruel or ruthful, whom
Precipitate fate hath of your frailties purged;
Whom duly the impartial winds have dirged,
In autumn or the glorying vernal bloom:
Already is your strife become as nought;
Idle the bullet's flight, the bayonet's thrust,
The senseless cannon's dull, unmeaning word;
Idle your feud; and all for which ye fought
To this arbitrament of loam referred,
And cold adjudication of the dust.
1903
ON THE AUTHOR'S SEVENTY-SIXTH BIRTHDAY
Long watching wars and feuds, at last I am old.The friends of my far youth are in the grave;
Buried less deeply than the unsung but brave
Whose hearts the embrace of the sea did leave full cold.
And now, though small the lure of fame or gold,
There is one boon that I indeed must crave.
Some gift the Gods to luckier mortals gave?
Ah, no: but the felicity to behold
This Nation, that survives the storms of Fate,
Still young in soul; still rich by secret dower
And cryptic birthright; casting rage and hate
From her remembrance; and throughout each hour
Strengthening the Forts of Peace, that they may tower
Impregnably mighty, and invincibly great.
32
FORCE AND FREEDOM
O doubtless ye can trample and enchain,Sow wrath and breathe out winter; but can ye
Persuade the muttering bondsman he is free,
Or with a signal build the summer again?
O, ye can hold the rivulets of the plain
A little while from nuptials with the sea,
But the fierce mountain-stream of Liberty
Not edicts and not hosts may long restrain.
For this is of the heights and of the deeps,
Born of the heights and in the deeps conceived.
This, from the lofty places of the mind,
Gushes pellucid, vehemently upheaved;
And tears and heart's blood hallow it, as it sweeps
Invincibly on, with Might no Might can bind.
1902
THE MOCK SELF
Few friends are mine, though many wights there beWho, meeting oft a phantasm that makes claim
To be myself, and hath my face and name,
And whose thin fraud I wink at privily,
Account this light impostor very me.
What boots it undeceive them, and proclaim
Myself myself, and whelm this cheat with shame?
I care not, so he leave my true self free,
Impose not on me also; but alas!
I too, at fault, bewildered, sometimes take
Him for myself, and far from mine own sight,
Torpid, indifferent, doth mine own self pass;
And yet anon leaps suddenly awake,
And spurns the gibbering mime into the night.
1888
33
TO A HIGHBORN BEAUTY
If you had lived in that more stately time
When men remembered the great Tudor queen,
To noblest verse your name had wedded been,
And you for ever crowned with golden rhyme.
If, mid Lorenzo's Florence, made sublime
By Art's Re-birth, you had moved, a Muse serene,
The mightiest limners had revealed your mien
To all the ages and each wondering clime.
When men remembered the great Tudor queen,
To noblest verse your name had wedded been,
And you for ever crowned with golden rhyme.
If, mid Lorenzo's Florence, made sublime
By Art's Re-birth, you had moved, a Muse serene,
The mightiest limners had revealed your mien
To all the ages and each wondering clime.
Fled are the singers that from language drew
Its virgin secrets, and in narrow space
The mightiest limners sleep: and only He,
The Eternal Artist, still creates anew
What shames all else on earth—the breathing grace
That takes the world into captivity.
Its virgin secrets, and in narrow space
The mightiest limners sleep: and only He,
The Eternal Artist, still creates anew
What shames all else on earth—the breathing grace
That takes the world into captivity.
1909
PEACE AND WAR
The sleek sea, gorged and sated, basking lies;
The cruel creature fawns and blinks and purrs;
And almost we forget what fangs are hers,
And trust for once her emerald-golden eyes;
Though haply on the morrow she shall rise
And summon her infernal ministers,
And charge her everlasting barriers,
With wild white fingers snatching at the skies.
The cruel creature fawns and blinks and purrs;
And almost we forget what fangs are hers,
And trust for once her emerald-golden eyes;
Though haply on the morrow she shall rise
And summon her infernal ministers,
And charge her everlasting barriers,
With wild white fingers snatching at the skies.
So, betwixt Peace and War, man's life is cast;
Yet hath he dreamed of purest Peace at last
Shepherding all the nations ev'n as sheep.
The inconstant, moody ocean shall as soon,
At the cold dictates of the bloodless moon,
Swear an eternity of halcyon sleep.
Yet hath he dreamed of purest Peace at last
Shepherding all the nations ev'n as sheep.
The inconstant, moody ocean shall as soon,
At the cold dictates of the bloodless moon,
Swear an eternity of halcyon sleep.
1904
34
ESTRANGEMENT
So, without overt breach, we fall apart,Tacitly sunder—neither you nor I
Conscious of one intelligible Why,
And both, from severance, winning equal smart.
So, with resigned and acquiescent heart,
Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie,
I seem to see an alien shade pass by,
A spirit wherein I have no lot or part.
Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim,
From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn
That June on her triumphal progress goes
Through arched and bannered woodlands; while for him
She is a legend emptied of concern,
And idle is the rumour of the rose.
1894
TO AUBREY DE VERE
Poet, whose grave and strenuous lyre is still
For Truth and Duty strung; whose art eschews
The lighter graces of the softer Muse,
Disdainful of mere craftsman's glittering skill:
Yours is a soul from visionary hill
Watching and harkening for ethereal news,
Looking beyond life's storms and death's cold dews
To habitations of the eternal will.
For Truth and Duty strung; whose art eschews
The lighter graces of the softer Muse,
Disdainful of mere craftsman's glittering skill:
Yours is a soul from visionary hill
Watching and harkening for ethereal news,
Looking beyond life's storms and death's cold dews
To habitations of the eternal will.
Not mine your mystic creed; not mine, in prayer
And worship, at the ensanguined Cross to kneel!
But when I mark your faith how pure and fair,
How based on love, on passion for man's weal,
My mind, half envying what it cannot share,
Reveres the reverence which it cannot feel.
And worship, at the ensanguined Cross to kneel!
But when I mark your faith how pure and fair,
How based on love, on passion for man's weal,
My mind, half envying what it cannot share,
Reveres the reverence which it cannot feel.
1892
35
THE INEXORABLE LAW
We, too, shall pass; we, too, shall disappear,Ev'n as the mighty nations that have waned
And perished. Not more surely are ordained
The crescence and the cadence of the year,
High-hearted June, October drooped and sere,
Than this grey consummation. We have reigned
Augustly; let our part be so sustained
That in far morns, whose voice we shall not hear,
It may be said: “This Mistress of the sword
And conquering prow, this Empire swoln with spoils,
Yet served the Human Cause, yet strove for Man;
Hers was the purest greatness we record;
We whose ingathered sheaves her tilth foreran:
Whose Peace comes of her tempests, and her toils.”
1902
36
BARREN LEVITY
I think the immortal servants of mankind,
If still they are watching by how slow degrees
The World-Soul greatens with the centuries,
Mourn most Man's barren levity of mind,
The ear to no large harmonies inclined,
The witless thirst for false wit's worthless lees,
The laugh mistimed in tragic presences,
The eye to all majestic meanings blind.
If still they are watching by how slow degrees
The World-Soul greatens with the centuries,
Mourn most Man's barren levity of mind,
The ear to no large harmonies inclined,
The witless thirst for false wit's worthless lees,
The laugh mistimed in tragic presences,
The eye to all majestic meanings blind.
O prophets, martyrs, saviours, ye were great,
All truth being great to you: ye deemed Man more
Than a dull jest, God's ennui to amuse:
The world for you, held purport: Life ye wore
Proudly, as Kings their solemn robes of state;
And humbly, as the mightiest monarchs use.
All truth being great to you: ye deemed Man more
Than a dull jest, God's ennui to amuse:
The world for you, held purport: Life ye wore
Proudly, as Kings their solemn robes of state;
And humbly, as the mightiest monarchs use.
1903
HIS SPLENDID DEFECT
'Twas said the gods, when they Porphyrion slew,And vast Enceladus under Etna laid,
Could conquer only with a mortal's aid
These mortal giants and their snakish crew.
Poet who didst with radiant valour hew
At monsters old, thou fought'st them with a blade
Too wholly of celestial metal made,
And lacking help of mere gross human thew.
Therefore thou didst prevail not! For to quell
Earth's mightiest evil things 'tis not enough
To array against them things of heavenly birth.
Earthly auxiliaries thou need'st as well:
Earth-founded powers, and earth-forged weapons tough,
And breastplate hard as the iron breast of the earth.
1904
37
SECRET COMMUNION
Pert Folly said to skyborn Freedom: “ThouHast been so long unknown on Ireland's shore,
Art certain she doth miss thee any more?
Nay, if thou should'st return to-morrow, how
Will she remember thee, whose face is now
One of the vague, dim things of heretofore?
What if she pause, loth to unlatch her door
To such a stranger?” Then with a lit brow
Did Freedom speak: “Can Erin's soul forget
Mine, her companion 'mid the fields and streams
Of her far youth? Ah, no! And though it seems
Ages untold since she and I have met
Ev'n for a day, we meet at midnight yet,
For always am I with her in her dreams.”
TRANQUIL LIBERTY
First published October 23, 1914. I let it stand but commit myself to no opinion as to its wisdom or folly.
Pax est tranquilla libertas.—Cicero
Nor are repasts beneath the hair-swung sword,
That awed in Syracuse the tyrant's board,
Such banquets as the peoples hunger for.
Not to Europa's bull need toreador
Wave scarlet provocation; and Accord
Blooms ill from arsenals for ever stored
With mouths of death for ever in act to roar.
An areopagus of nations let
Men found hereafter, puissant to restrain
Flaunted armipotence, whether on earth or sea
Or the outraged air, and suchlike peace beget
As Tully envisioned; peace itself being vain,
That is not also tranquil liberty.
1914
38
TO A SON OF WALES
Since first I saw your mountains long ago,Dark behind Conway's or Carnarvon's hold,
I have watched the Alps put on their evening gold,
And morning kindle peaks of Afric snow;
I have crossed Niagara's flood and Delaware's flow,
And loitered 'midst Italian vinelands old,
And visited isles which the far deeps enfold,
Where Spain is ashes and a sunset-glow.
But lovely as in youth are yet to me
Mona's bleak fields and Glaslyn's torrent wave;
And dearer now than ever, their wild charm,
When hardy Wales pours forth her children free,
Hungering to aid her ancient Conqueror's arm
Lest Freedom's self reel to a blood-red grave.
1915
THE PLAGUE OF APATHY
No tears are left; we have quickly spent that store!Indifference like a dewless night hath come.
From wintry sea to sea the land lies numb.
With palsy of the spirit stricken sore,
The land lies numb from iron shore to shore.
The unconcerned, they flourish: loud are some,
And without shame. The multitude stand dumb.
The England that we vaunted is no more.
Only the witling's sneer, the worldling's smile,
The weakling's tremors, fail him not who fain
Would rouse to heroic deed. And all the while,
A homeless people, in their mortal pain,
Toward one far and famous ocean isle
Stretch hands of prayer, and stretch those hands in vain.
39
THE WORLD IN ARMOUR
By an unaccountable slip, in the footnote to a page of my volume A Hundred Poems, I stated that these three sonnets appeared in print ten years before the outbreak of the War which they seem to have prefigured. I subsequently found that they were first published (in the Spectator) on July 13, 1894, not ten but twenty years and a few days before that world-catastrophe, whose first sequel the last of these sonnets may, I think, be said to have foreshadowed not altogether obscurely.
I
Under this shade of crimson wings abhorred
That never wholly leaves the sky serene—
While Vengeance sleeps a sleep so light between
Dominions that acclaim Thee overlord—
Sadly the blast of Thy tremendous word,
Whate'er its mystic purport may have been,
Echoes across the ages, Nazarene:
Not to bring peace Mine errand, but a sword.
That never wholly leaves the sky serene—
While Vengeance sleeps a sleep so light between
Dominions that acclaim Thee overlord—
Sadly the blast of Thy tremendous word,
Whate'er its mystic purport may have been,
Echoes across the ages, Nazarene:
Not to bring peace Mine errand, but a sword.
For lo, Thy world uprises and lies down
In armour, and its Peace is War, in all
Save the great death that weaves War's dreadful crown:
War unennobled by heroic pain:
War without triumph, without glorious fall;
War that sits smiling, with the eyes of Cain.
In armour, and its Peace is War, in all
Save the great death that weaves War's dreadful crown:
War unennobled by heroic pain:
War without triumph, without glorious fall;
War that sits smiling, with the eyes of Cain.
II
When London's Plague, that day by day enrolled
His thousands dead, nor deigned his rage to abate
Till grass was green in silent Bishopsgate,
Had come and passed like thunder, still, 'tis told,
The monster, driven to earth, in hovels old
And haunts obscure, though dormant, lingered late,
Till the dread Fire, one roaring wave of fate,
Rose, and swept clean his last retreat and hold.
His thousands dead, nor deigned his rage to abate
Till grass was green in silent Bishopsgate,
Had come and passed like thunder, still, 'tis told,
The monster, driven to earth, in hovels old
And haunts obscure, though dormant, lingered late,
Till the dread Fire, one roaring wave of fate,
Rose, and swept clean his last retreat and hold.
In Europe live the dregs of Plague to-day,
Dregs of full many an ancient Plague and dire—
Old wrongs, old lies of ages blind and cruel.
What if alone the world-war's world-wide fire
Can purge the ambushed pestilence away?
Yet woe to him that idly lights the fuel!
Dregs of full many an ancient Plague and dire—
Old wrongs, old lies of ages blind and cruel.
What if alone the world-war's world-wide fire
Can purge the ambushed pestilence away?
Yet woe to him that idly lights the fuel!
40
III
A moment's fantasy, the vision came
Of Europe dipped in fiery death, and so
Mounting re-born, with vestal limbs aglow,
Splendid and fragrant from her bath of flame.
It fleeted; and a phantom without name,
Sightless, dismembered, terrible, said: “Lo,
I am that ravished Europe men shall know
After the morn of blood and night of shame.”
Of Europe dipped in fiery death, and so
Mounting re-born, with vestal limbs aglow,
Splendid and fragrant from her bath of flame.
It fleeted; and a phantom without name,
Sightless, dismembered, terrible, said: “Lo,
I am that ravished Europe men shall know
After the morn of blood and night of shame.”
The spectre passed, and I beheld alone
The Europe of the present, as she stands,
Powerless from terror of her own vast power,
'Neath novel stars, beside a brink unknown;
And round her the sad Kings, with sleepless hands,
Piling the fagots, hour by doomful hour.
The Europe of the present, as she stands,
Powerless from terror of her own vast power,
'Neath novel stars, beside a brink unknown;
And round her the sad Kings, with sleepless hands,
Piling the fagots, hour by doomful hour.
TO AMERICA, CONCERNING ENGLAND
I may be exposing my memory (not that it will greatly trouble me) to unfriendly if also well-meant criticism in reprinting this sonnet, in which America, during the period of her non-intervention in the late European War, was reproached for the neutral attitude which we must now suppose her to have afterwards believed it either her duty or her interest to abandon. But as my appeal to her is said, with every appearance of authority, to have influenced many serious minds in the United States, where it was undoubtedly read by countless multitudes, and where it called forth in many quarters such bitter retort as sufficiently proved it to have been a letter which reached its address, there can be no reason other than a merely capricious one, on my part, for seeking to efface all memory of it now. It may be permissible for me to add that if anyone regards this poem as convicting me of anti-American bias, I think more than enough printed evidence can be brought forward to justify my acquittal on that charge.
Of her large soul's abundance and excess,
Her daughter and her mightiest heritress,
Dowered with her thoughts, and lit on thy great way
By her great lamps that shine and fail not? Yea!
And at this thunderous hour of struggle and stress,
Hither across the ocean wilderness
What word comes frozen on the frozen spray?
Neutrality! The tiger from his den
Springs at thy mother's throat, and canst thou now
Watch with a stranger's gaze? So be it, then!
Thy loss is more than hers; for, bruised and torn,
She shall yet live without thine aid, and thou
Without the crown divine thou might'st have worn.
1915
41
NIGHT AND TIME
On a grey city I looked down, where strove
Britain with Rome, and Saxon warred with Dane,
And faith to faith succeeded, fane to fane;
Where haply, shrined in immemorial grove;
Some god of dayspring faded before Jove;
Where Jove to Christ, where Christ's to Odin's reign,
Did yield; and Odin bowed to Christ again;
And each a darkness round a darkness wove.
Britain with Rome, and Saxon warred with Dane,
And faith to faith succeeded, fane to fane;
Where haply, shrined in immemorial grove;
Some god of dayspring faded before Jove;
Where Jove to Christ, where Christ's to Odin's reign,
Did yield; and Odin bowed to Christ again;
And each a darkness round a darkness wove.
And Silence was abroad, and Dreams went by;
And hearthfires paled and faltered and died out,
As dying gods had paled to ghosts and fled;
And a blear mist came slowly up like Doubt;
And there was only Night, and Time, and I,
And city upon city of the dead.
And hearthfires paled and faltered and died out,
As dying gods had paled to ghosts and fled;
And a blear mist came slowly up like Doubt;
And there was only Night, and Time, and I,
And city upon city of the dead.
POWER AND CHARM
A cot was ours, lone on a wooded fell
That gazed into a fairy Mere renowned.
Dark mountains on our right hand camped around;
Green, on our left, were copse and ferny dell.
Thus betwixt Power and Charm we abode; and well
Loved we the brows of Power, with silence crowned;
Yet many a time, when awesomely they frowned,
To Charm we turned, with Charm, with Charm to dwell.
That gazed into a fairy Mere renowned.
Dark mountains on our right hand camped around;
Green, on our left, were copse and ferny dell.
Thus betwixt Power and Charm we abode; and well
Loved we the brows of Power, with silence crowned;
Yet many a time, when awesomely they frowned,
To Charm we turned, with Charm, with Charm to dwell.
So have I turned, when overbrooded long
By that great star-familiar peak austere,
My Milton's Sinai-Helicon divine,
To some far earthlier singer's earth-sweet song:
A song frail as the windflower, and as dear,
With no more purpose than the eglantine.
By that great star-familiar peak austere,
My Milton's Sinai-Helicon divine,
To some far earthlier singer's earth-sweet song:
A song frail as the windflower, and as dear,
With no more purpose than the eglantine.
42
RESTORED ALLEGIANCE
I also, though with hauntings of remorse,Railed at our England, bidding her give heed
To better counsellors than the guides who lead
Power unbeloved, on yonder cold, proud course!
Yet ... when I look abroad, and track the source,
More selfish far, of other nations' deed,
And mark their tortuous craft, their jealous greed,
Their serpent-wisdom or mere soulless force,
Homeward returns my vagrant fealty,
Crying: “O England, shouldst thou one day fall,
Shatter'd in ruins by some Titan foe,
Justice were thenceforth weaker throughout all
The earth, and Truth less passionately free,
And God the poorer for thine overthrow.”
1885
43
TO ABERDEEN
At the great dance and upleap of the year,For me, of late, the northwind's cold accost
Was all day long in thy warm welcome lost.
How can I choose henceforth but hold thee dear?
Hoary thy countenance, and thy mien severe,
And thou a nursling of the hailstorm wast,
But on thy heart hath fall'n no touch of frost,
O City of the pallid brow austere.
Grey, wintry-featured, sea-throned Aberdeen!
The stranger thou hast honoured shall not cease,
In whatsoever ways he rest or roam,
To wish thee happy fortune, fame serene:
Thee and thy towers of learning and of peace,
That brood benignant on the northern foam.
ON EXCESSIVE DEFERENCE TO FOREIGN LITERARY OPINION
What! and shall we, with such submissive airsAs age demands in reverence from the young,
Snatch at these crumbs of praise from Europe flung,
And doubt of our own greatness till it bears
The warranty of your Goethes or Voltaires?
We who alone in latter times have sung
Strains that had shamed not him from Mantua sprung—
We who are Milton's kindred, Shakespeare's heirs.
The prize of lyric victory who shall gain
If ours be not the laurel, ours the palm?
More than the wanton leer of fevered Night
Around the eddying flotsam of the Seine,
And more than Weimar's proud elaborate Calm,
One flash of Byron's lightning, Burns's light.
1889
44
OUR EASTERN TREASURE
One of a series of sonnets published in the National Review for June 1885. Their patriotism, being that of youth, was perhaps more vehement than chastened, but I feel warranted in reprinting this sonnet as it does not appear to be without pertinence and relevance at the present day.
A thin voice pipingly revived of late,
Which saith our India is a cumbrous weight,
An idle decoration bought too dear.
The wiser world contemns not gorgeous gear,
And knows that by a just and happy fate
The sense of greatness keeps a nation great,
Telling her when to fear not—when to fear!
It may be that if hands of greed could steal
From England's grasp the envied orient prize,
This tide of gold would flood her still, as now;
But were she the same England, made to feel
A brightness gone from out those starlike eyes,
A splendour from that constellated brow?
April 1885
HOME-ROOTEDNESS
First published at the same date, and in the same periodical, as the preceding sonnet. This is reproduced here for reasons which seem partly identical in both cases.
I own to ‘insularity,’ although
'Tis fall'n from fashion, as full well I know.
For somehow, being a plain and simple wight,
I am skin-deep a child of the new light,
But chiefly am mere Englishman below,
Of island-fostering, and can hate a foe,
And trust my kin before the Muscovite.
Whom shall I trust if not my kin? And whom
Account so near in natural bonds as these
Born of my mother England's mighty womb,
Nursed on my mother England's mighty knees,
And lull'd as I was lull'd in glory and gloom
With cradle-song of her protecting seas?
April 1885
45
TO A SCOTTISH FRIEND
Around your northern home, where never ceaseThe ebb and flow of Nith, whose waters glide
Rich with their memories of the Muse; whose tide,
In haunts of moorfowl and the wandering fleece,
Down by Caerlaverock beyond old Dumfries,
To Solway brings its dowry, like a bride;
There do the lowland mothers mourn with pride
The lowland sons, whom War hath lapped in Peace.
But you—be nobly gladsome, seeing that what
Was great aforetime still disdains to fade:
The spirit perfervid of the heroic Scot,
Its fire unlulled, and hardly in earth allayed:
The ancient native prowess unforgot,
Valour undrooped, and manhood undecayed.
1915
TERMONDE
In wrecked Termonde, that 'mid the tramp and bellowOf War's mad herd saw ruin on ruin piled,
The enemy had deflowered with havoc wild
A fair abode of Sculpture without fellow;
And while the autumn sunlight rich and mellow
On Art's poor shattered glories sadly smiled,
There, still unmaimed, with her unwounded child,
Leaned a serene Madonna of Donatello.
O'er a fledged Hermes, lord of speed and spoil—
O'er a bemired and fall'n Laocoön—
Near a prone Venus of the dust, she shone.
O'er winged Deceit, and Agony's serpent coil,
And Beauty born to inflame and to entoil,
Motherhood, scatheless, lived divinely on.
1915
46
THE SCOTT MONUMENT, PRINCE'S STREET, EDINBURGH
Here sits he throned, where men and gods beholdHis domelike brow—a good man simply great;
Here in this highway proud, that arrow-straight
Cleaves at one stroke the new world from the old.
On this side, Commerce, Fashion, Progress, Gold;
On that, the Castle Hill, the Canongate,
A thousand years of war and love and hate
There palpably upstanding fierce and bold.
Here sits he throned; beneath him, full and fast,
The tides of Modern Life impetuous run.
O Scotland, was it well and meetly done?
For see! he sits with back turned on the Past—
He whose imperial edict bade it last
While yon grey ramparts kindle to the sun.
ON HEARING MADAME OLGA SAMAROFF PLAY
What hopes and fears, what tragical delight,What lonely rapture, what immortal pain,
Through those two hands have flowed, nor thrilled in vain
The listening spirit and all its depth and height!
Lovelier and sweeter from those hands of might
The great strange soul of Schumann breathes again;
Through those two hands the over-peopled brain
Of Chopin floods with dreams the impassioned night,
Yea, and he too, Beethoven the divine,
Still shakes men's bosoms with his bosom's throes,
O fair Enchantress, through those hands of thine;
And yet perchance forgets at last his woes,
Happy at last to think that hands like those
Have poured out to the world his heart's red wine.
| The Poems of Sir William Watson | |