Sketch Of A Political Character

There is a race of men, who master life,
Their victory being inversely as their strife;
Who capture by refraining from pursuit;
Shake not the bough, yet load their hands with fruit;
The earth's high places who attain to fill,
By most indomitably sitting still.
While others, full upon the fortress hurled,
Lay fiery siege to the embattled world,
Of such rude arts _their_ natures feel no need;
Greatly inert, they lazily succeed;
Find in the golden mean their proper bliss,
And doing nothing, never do amiss;
But lapt in men's good graces live, and die
By all regretted, nobody knows why.

Cast in this fortunate Olympian mould,
The admirable * * * * behold;
Whom naught could dazzle or mislead, unless
'Twere the wild light of fatal cautiousness;
Who never takes a step from his own door

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poem by William Watson
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England To Ireland

Spouse whom my sword in the olden time won me,
Winning me hatred more sharp than a sword--
Mother of children who hiss at or shun me,
Curse or revile me, and hold me abhorred--
Heiress of anger that nothing assuages,
Mad for the future, and mad from the past--
Daughter of all the implacable ages,
Lo, let us turn and be lovers at last!

Lovers whom tragical sin hath made equal,
One in transgression and one in remorse.
Bonds may be severed, but what were the sequel?
Hardly shall amity come of divorce.
Let the dead Past have a royal entombing,
O'er it the Future built white for a fane!
I that am haughty from much overcoming
Sue to thee, supplicate--nay, is it vain?

Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness,--
Could we but see one another, 'twere well!

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poem by William Watson
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The Men Who Man Our Batteries

The men who man our batteries,
The men who serve our guns,
They need not honeyed flatteries,
For they are Britain's sons!
They go, when Duty speeds them,
Wherever bullets fly;
Wherever England needs them,
When Duty bids, they die.

The men who man our strongholds,
Or march to yonder field
Where Valour against Wrong holds
A realm that scorns to yield,
From Chiltern Hills or Grampians
May pour their living tide,
But all are England's champions
And all are England's pride.

And, lo! how the abhorrence
Of sceptred crime can join

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poem by William Watson
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England My Mother

I

England my mother,
Wardress of waters.
Builder of peoples,
Maker of men,-

Hast thou yet leisure
Left for the muses?
Heed'st thou the songsmith
Forging the rhyme?

Deafened with tumults,
How canst thou hearken?
Strident is faction,
Demos is loud.

Lazarus, hungry,
Menaces Dives;
Labour the giant

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poem by William Watson
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Love Outloved

I Love cometh and love goeth,
And he is wise who knoweth
Whither and whence love flies:
But wise and yet more wise
Are they that heed not whence he flies or whither
Who hither speeds to-day, to-morrow thither;
Like to the wind that as it listeth blows,
And man doth hear the sound thereof, but knows
Nor whence it comes nor whither yet it goes.

II

O sweet my sometime loved and worshipt one
A day thou gavest me
That rose full-orbed in starlike happiness
And lit our heaven that other stars had none:--
Sole as that westering sphere companionless
When twilight is begun
And the dead sun transfigureth the sea:
A day so bright

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poem by William Watson
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Ode in May

LET me go forth, and share
   The overflowing Sun
   With one wise friend, or one
Better than wise, being fair,
Where the pewit wheels and dips
   On heights of bracken and ling,
And Earth, unto her leaflet tips,
   Tingles with the Spring.

What is so sweet and dear
   As a prosperous morn in May,
   The confident prime of the day,
And the dauntless youth of the year,
When nothing that asks for bliss,
   Asking aright, is denied,
And half of the world a bridegroom is,
   And half of the world a bride?

The Song of Mingling flows,
   Grave, ceremonial, pure,

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poem by William Watson
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In Laleham Churchyard

'Twas at this season, year by year,
The singer who lies songless here
Was wont to woo a less austere,
Less deep repose,
Where Rotha to Winandermere
Unresting flows,-

Flows through a land where torrents call
To far-off torrents as they fall,
And mountains in their cloudy pall
Keep ghostly state,
And Nature makes majestical
Man's lowliest fate.

There, 'mid the August glow, still came
He of the twice-illustrious name,
The loud impertinence of fame
Not loth to flee-
Not loth with brooks and fells to claim
Fraternity.

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poem by William Watson
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A Child's Hair

A letter from abroad. I tear
Its sheathing open, unaware
What treasure gleams within; and there-
Like bird from cage-
Flutters a curl of golden hair
Out of the page.

From such a frolic head 'twas shorn!
('Tis but five years since he was born.)
Not sunlight scampering over corn
Were merrier thing.
A child? A fragment of the morn,
A piece of Spring!

Surely an ampler, fuller day
Than drapes our English skies with grey-
A deeper light, a richer ray
Than here we know-
To this bright tress have given away
Their living glow.

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poem by William Watson
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The Man Forsworn

Who draws to-day the unrighteous sword?
Behold him stand, the Man Forsworn,
The warrior of the faithless word,
The pledge disowned, the covenant torn,
Who prates of honour, truth, and trust,
Ere he profanes them in the dust.

When to yon fabric grey in fame,
That Windsor lifts against the sky,
In martial cloak the Kaiser came,
We did not dream it cloaked a spy;
Yet there he sat, as now we know,
A guest, a kinsman, and a foe.

France was a gallant foe and fair,
That looked us proudly in the face,
With her frank eyes and freeborn air,
And valour half-concealed in grace.
Noblest of all with whom we strove,
At last she gives us noble love.

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poem by William Watson
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To Edward Dowden: On Receiving From Him A Copy Of 'The Life Of Shelley

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

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poem by William Watson
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