The Poems of William Watson Part 3

No record Art keeps Of her travail and throes.

There is toil on the steeps,-- On the summits, repose.

THE GLIMPSE

Just for a day you crossed my life's dull track, Put my ign.o.bler dreams to sudden shame, Went your bright way, and left me to fall back On my own world of poorer deed and aim;

To fall back on my meaner world, and feel Like one who, dwelling 'mid some, smoke-dimmed town,-- In a brief pause of labour's sullen wheel,-- 'Scaped from the street's dead dust and factory's frown,--

In stainless daylight saw the pure seas roll, Saw mountains pillaring the perfect sky: Then journeyed home, to carry in his soul The torment of the difference till he die.

THE BALLAD OF THE "BRITAIN'S PRIDE"

It was a skipper of Lowestoft That trawled the northern sea, In a smack of thrice ten tons and seven, And the _Britain's Pride_ was she.

And the waves were high to windward, And the waves were high to lee, And he said as he lost his trawl-net, "What is to be, will be."

His craft she reeled and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe, In a storm that threatened to mow her down As gra.s.s is mown by the scythe; When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft, And he saw one mast of a sunken s.h.i.+p Like a dead arm held aloft.

And a voice came faint from the rigging-- "Help! help!" it whispered and sighed-- And a single form to the sole mast clung, In the roaring darkness wide.

Oh the crew were but four hands all told, On board of the _Britain's Pride_, And ever "Hold on till daybreak!"

Across the night they cried.

Slowly melted the darkness, Slowly rose the sun, And only the lad in the rigging Was left, out of thirty-one, To tell the tale of his captain, The English sailor true, That did his duty and met his death As English sailors do.

Peace to the gallant spirit, The greatly proved and tried, And to all who have fed the hungry sea That is still unsatisfied; And honour and glory for ever, While rolls the unresting tide, To the skipper of little Lowestoft, And the crew of the _Britain's Pride_.

LINES

(WITH A VOLUME OF THE AUTHOR'S POEMS SENT TO M.R.C.)

Go, Verse, nor let the gra.s.s of tarrying grow Beneath thy feet iambic. Southward go O'er Thamesis his stream, nor halt until Thou reach the summit of a suburb hill To lettered fame not unfamiliar: there Crave rest and shelter of a scholiast fair, Who dwelleth in a world of old romance, Magic emprise and faery chevisaunce.

Tell her, that he who made thee, years ago, By northern stream and mountain, and where blow Great breaths from the sea-sunset, at this day One half thy fabric fain would rase away; But she must take thee faults and all, my Verse, Forgive thy better and forget thy worse.

Thee, doubtless, she shall place, not scorned, among More famous songs by happier minstrels sung;-- In Shakespeare's shadow thou shalt find a home, Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome, Or awed by Dante's wintry presence be, Or won by Goethe's regal suavity, Or with those masters hardly less adored Repose, of Rydal and of Farringford; And--like a mortal rapt from men's abodes Into some skyey fastness of the G.o.ds-- Divinely neighboured, thou in such a shrine Mayst for a moment dream thyself divine.

THE RAVEN'S SHADOW

Seabird, elemental sprite, Moulded of the sun and spray-- Raven, dreary flake of night Drifting in the eye of day-- What in common have ye two, Meeting 'twixt the blue and blue?

Thou to eastward carriest The keen savour of the foam,-- Thou dost bear unto the west Fragrance from thy woody home, Where perchance a house is thine Odorous of the oozy pine.

Eastward thee thy proper cares, Things of mighty moment, call; Thee to westward thine affairs Summon, weighty matters all: I, where land and sea contest, Watch you eastward, watch you west,

Till, in snares of fancy caught, Mystically changed ye seem, And the bird becomes a thought, And the thought becomes a dream, And the dream, outspread on high, Lords it o'er the abject sky.

Surely I have known before Phantoms of the shapes ye be-- Haunters of another sh.o.r.e 'Leaguered by another sea.

There my wanderings night and morn Reconcile me to the bourn.

There the bird of happy wings Wafts the ocean-news I crave; Rumours of an isle he brings Gemlike on the golden wave: But the baleful beak and plume Scatter immelodious gloom.

Though the flow'rs be faultless made, Perfectly to live and die-- Though the bright clouds bloom and fade Flow'rlike 'midst a meadowy sky-- Where this raven roams forlorn Veins of midnight flaw the morn.

He not less will croak and croak As he ever caws and caws, Till the starry dance he broke, Till the sphery paean pause, And the universal chime Falter out of tune and time.

Coils the labyrinthine sea Duteous to the lunar will, But some discord stealthily Vexes the world-ditty still, And the bird that caws and caws Clasps creation with his claws.

LUX PERDITA

Thine were the weak, slight hands That might have taken this strong soul, and bent Its stubborn substance to thy soft intent, And bound it unresisting, with such bands As not the arm of envious heaven had rent.

Thine were the calming eyes That round my pinnace could have stilled the sea, And drawn thy voyager home, and bid him be Pure with their pureness, with their wisdom wise, Merged in their light, and greatly lost in thee.

But thou--thou pa.s.sed'st on, With whiteness clothed of dedicated days, Cold, like a star; and me in alien ways Thou leftest following life's chance lure, where shone The wandering gleam that beckons and betrays.

ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES

She stands, a thousand-wintered tree, By countless morns impearled; Her broad roots coil beneath the sea, Her branches sweep the world; Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed, Clothe the remotest strand With forests from her scatterings made, New nations fostered in her shade, And linking land with land.

O ye by wandering tempest sown 'Neath every alien star, Forget not whence the breath was blown That wafted you afar!

For ye are still her ancient seed On younger soil let fall-- Children of Britain's island-breed, To whom the Mother in her need Perchance may one day call.

HISTORY

Here, peradventure, in this mirror gla.s.sed, Who gazes long and well at times beholds Some sunken feature of the mummied Past, But oftener only the embroidered folds And soiled magnificence of her rent robe Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties That sweep the dust of aeons in our eyes And with their trailing pride c.u.mber the globe.-- For lo! the high, imperial Past is dead: The air is full of its dissolved bones; Invincible armies long since vanquished, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Powerless potentates and foolish sages, Impede the slow steps of the pompous ages.

THE EMPTY NEST

I saunter all about the pleasant place You made thrice pleasant, O my friends, to me; But you are gone where laughs in radiant grace That thousand-memoried unimpulsive sea.

To storied precincts of the southern foam, Dear birds of pa.s.sage, ye have taken wing, And ah! for me, when April wafts you home, The spring will more than ever be the spring Still lovely, as of old, this haunted ground; Tenderly, still, the autumn suns.h.i.+ne falls; And gorgeously the woodlands tower around, Freak'd with wild light at golden intervals: Yet, for the ache your absence leaves, O friends, Earth's lifeless pageantries are poor amends.

IRELAND