The Poems of William Watson Part 5

Yes! urban is your Muse, and owns An empire based on London stones; Yet flow'rs, as mountain violets sweet, Spring from the pavement 'neath her feet.

Of wilder birth this Muse of mine, Hill-cradled, and baptized with brine; And 'tis for her a sweet despair To watch that courtly step and air!

Yet surely she, without reproof, Greeting may send from realms aloof, And even claim a tie in blood, And dare to deem it sisterhood.

For well we know, those Maidens be All daughters of Mnemosyne; And 'neath the unifying sun, Many the songs--but Song is one.

TO EDWARD CLODD

Friend, in whose friends.h.i.+p I am twice well-starred, A debt not time may cancel is your due; For was it not your praise that earliest drew, On me obscure, that chivalrous regard, Ev'n his, who, knowing fame's first steep how hard, With generous lips no faltering clarion blew, Bidding men hearken to a lyre by few Heeded, nor grudge the bay to one more bard?

Bitter the task, year by inglorious year, Of suitor at the world's reluctant ear.

One cannot sing for ever, like a bird, For sole delight of singing! Him his mate Suffices, listening with a heart elate; Nor more his joy, if all the rapt heav'n heard.

TO EDWARD DOWDEN

ON RECEIVING FROM HIM A COPY OF "THE LIFE OF Sh.e.l.lEY"

First, ere I slake my hunger, let me thank The giver of the feast. For feast it is, Though of ethereal, translunary fare-- His story who pre-eminently of men Seemed nourished upon starbeams and the stuff Of rainbows, and the tempest, and the foam; Who hardly brooked on his impatient soul The fleshly trammels; whom at last the sea Gave to the fire, from whose wild arms the winds Took him, and shook him broadcast to the world.

In my young days of fervid poesy He drew me to him with his strange far light,-- He held me in a world all clouds and gleams, And vasty phantoms, where ev'n Man himself Moved like a phantom 'mid the clouds and gleams.

Anon the Earth recalled me, and a voice Murmuring of dethroned divinities And dead times deathless upon sculptured urn-- And Philomela's long-descended pain Flooding the night--and maidens of romance To whom asleep St. Agnes' love-dreams come-- Awhile constrained me to a sweet duresse And thraldom, lapping me in high content, Soft as the bondage of white amorous arms.

And then a third voice, long unheeded--held Claustral and cold, and dissonant and tame-- Found me at last with ears to hear. It sang Of lowly sorrows and familiar joys, Of simple manhood, artless womanhood, And childhood fragrant as the limpid morn; And from the homely matter nigh at hand Ascending and dilating, it disclosed s.p.a.ces and avenues, calm heights and breadths Of vision, whence I saw each blade of gra.s.s With roots that groped about eternity, And in each drop of dew upon each blade The mirror of the inseparable All.

The first voice, then the second, in their turns Had sung me captive. This voice sang me free.

Therefore, above all vocal sons of men, Since him whose sightless eyes saw h.e.l.l and heaven, To Wordsworth be my homage, thanks, and love.

Yet dear is Keats, a lucid presence, great With somewhat of a glorious soullessness.

And dear, and great with an excess of soul, Sh.e.l.ley, the hectic flamelike rose of verse, All colour, and all odour, and all bloom, Steeped in the noonlight, glutted with the sun, But somewhat lacking root in homely earth, Lacking such human moisture as bedews His not less starward stem of song, who, rapt Not less in glowing vision, yet retained His clasp of the prehensible, retained The warm touch of the world that lies to hand, Not in vague dreams of man forgetting men, Nor in vast morrows losing the to-day; Who trusted nature, trusted fate, nor found An Ogre, sovereign on the throne of things; Who felt the inc.u.mbence of the unknown, yet bore Without resentment the Divine reserve; Who suffered not his spirit to dash itself Against the crags and wavelike break in spray, But 'midst the infinite tranquillities Moved tranquil, and henceforth, by Rotha stream And Rydal's mountain-mirror, and where flows Yarrow thrice sung or Duddon to the sea, And wheresoe'er man's heart is thrilled by tones Struck from man's lyric heartstrings, shall survive.

FELICITY

A squalid, hideous town, where streams run black With vomit of a hundred roaring mills,-- Hither occasion calls me; and ev'n here, All in the sable reek that wantonly Defames the sunlight and deflowers the morn, One may at least surmise the sky still blue.

Ev'n here, the myriad slaves of the machine Deem life a boon; and here, in days far sped, I overheard a kind-eyed girl relate To her companions, how a favouring chance By some few s.h.i.+llings weekly had increased The earnings of her household, and she said: "So now we are happy, having all we wished,"-- Felicity indeed! though more it lay In wanting little than in winning all.

Felicity indeed! Across the years To me her tones come back, rebuking; me, Spreader of toils to snare the wandering Joy No guile may capture and no force surprise-- Only by them that never wooed her, won.

O curst with wide desires and s.p.a.cious dreams, Too cunningly do ye acc.u.mulate Appliances and means of happiness, E'er to be happy! Lavish hosts, ye make Elaborate preparation to receive A shy and simple guest, who, warned of all The ceremony and circ.u.mstance wherewith Ye mean to entertain her, will not come.

VER TENEBROSUM

SONNETS OF MARCH AND APRIL 1885

I

THE SOUDANESE

They wrong'd not us, nor sought 'gainst us to wage The bitter battle. On their G.o.d they cried For succour, deeming justice to abide In heaven, if banish'd from earth's vicinage.

And when they rose with a gall'd lion's rage, We, on the captor's, keeper's, tamer's side, We, with the alien tyranny allied, We bade them back to their Egyptian cage.

Scarce knew they who we were! A wind of blight From the mysterious far north-west we came.

Our greatness now their veriest babes have learn'd, Where, in wild desert homes, by day, by night, Thousands that weep their warriors unreturn'd, O England, O my country, curse thy name!

II

HASHEEN

"Of British arms, another victory!"

Triumphant words, through all the land's length sped.

Triumphant words, but, being interpreted, Words of ill sound, woful as words can be.

Another carnage by the drear Red Sea-- Another efflux of a sea more red!

Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong'd people yearning to be free.

Another blot on her great name, who stands Confounded, left intolerably alone With the dilating spectre of her own Dark sin, uprisen from yonder spectral sands: Penitent more than to herself is known; England, appall'd by her own crimson hands.

III

THE ENGLISH DEAD

Give honour to our heroes fall'n, how ill Soe'er the cause that bade them forth to die.

Honour to him, the untimely struck, whom high In place, more high in hope, 'twas fate's harsh 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 ill.u.s.trious shade of laurel tree, But with the poppy alone, their deeds and death.

IV

GORDON

Idle although our homage be and vain, Who loudly through the door of silence press And vie in zeal to crown death's nakedness, Not therefore shall melodious lips refrain Thy praises, gentlest warrior without stain, Denied the happy garland of success, Foil'd by dark fate, but glorious none the less, Greatest of losers, on the lone peak slain Of Alp-like virtue. Not to-day, and not To-morrow, shall thy spirit's splendour be Oblivion's victim; but when G.o.d shall find All human grandeur among men forgot, Then only shall the world, grown old and blind, Cease, in her dotage, to remember Thee.

V

GORDON _(concluded)_

Arab, Egyptian, English--by the sword Cloven, or pierced with spears, or bullet-mown-- In equal fate they sleep: their dust is grown A portion of the fiery sands abhorred.

And thou, what hast thou, hero, for reward, Thou, England's glory and her shame? O'erthrown Thou liest, unburied, or with grave unknown As his to whom on Nebo's height the Lord Showed all the land of Gilead, unto Dan; Judah sea-fringed; Mana.s.seh and Ephraim; And Jericho palmy, to where Zoar lay; And in a valley of Moab buried him, Over against Beth-Peor, but no man Knows of his sepulchre unto this day.

VI

THE TRUE PATRIOTISM