Changed Voices
Last night the seawind was to me
A metaphor of liberty,
And every wave along the beach
A starlit music seemed to be.
To-day the seawind is to me
A fettered soul that would be free,
And dumbly striving after speech
The tides yearn landward painfully.
To-morrow how shall sound for me
The changing voice of wind and sea?
What tidings shall be borne of each?
What rumour of what mystery?
poem by William Watson
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The Eternal Search
MY little maiden two years old, just able
To tower full half a head above the table,
With inquisition keen must needs explore
Whatever in my dwelling hath a door,
Whatever is behind a curtain hid,
Or lurks, a rich enigma, 'neath a lid.
So soon is the supreme desire confessed,
To probe the unknown! So soon begins the quest,
That never ends until asunder fall
The locks and bolts of the Last Door of All.
poem by William Watson
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The Fugitive Ideal
As some most pure and noble face,
Seen in the thronged and hurrying street,
Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace,
A flying odour sweet,
Then, passing, leaves the cheated sense
Baulked with a phantom excellence;
So, on our soul the visions rise
Of that fair life we never led:
They flash a splendour past our eyes,
We start, and they are fled:
They pass, and leave us with blank gaze,
Resigned to our ignoble days.
poem by William Watson
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To A Friend: Chafing At Enforced Idleness From Interrupted Health
Soon may the edict lapse, that on you lays
This dire compulsion of infertile days,
This hardest penal toil, reluctant rest!
Meanwhile I count you eminently blest,
Happy from labours heretofore well done,
Happy in tasks auspiciously begun.
For they are blest that have not much to rue--
That have not oft mis-heard the prompter's cue,
Stammered and stumbled and the wrong parts played,
And life a Tragedy of Errors made.
poem by William Watson
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Prelude
The mighty poets from their flowing store
Dispense like casual alms the careless ore;
Through throngs of men their lonely way they go,
Let fall their costly thoughts, nor seem to know.-
Not mine the rich and showering hand, that strews
The facile largess of a stintless Muse.
A fitful presence, seldom tarrying long,
Capriciously she touches me to song-
Then leaves me to lament her flight in vain,
And wonder will she ever come again.
poem by William Watson
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Liberty Rejected
About this heart thou hast
Thy chains made fast,
And think'st thou I would be
Therefrom set free,
And forth unbound be cast?
The ocean would as soon
Entreat the moon
Unsay the magic verse
That seals him hers
From silver noon to noon.
She stooped her pearly head
Seaward, and said:
'Would'st thou I gave to thee
Thy liberty,
In Time's youth forfeited?'
And from his inmost hold
The answer rolled:
[...] Read more
poem by William Watson
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Reluctant Summer
Reluctant Summer! once, a maid
Full easy of access,
In many a bee-frequented shade
Thou didst thy lover bless.
Divinely unreproved I played,
Then, with each liberal tress--
And art thou grown at last afraid
Of some too close caress?
Or deem'st that if thou shouldst abide
My passion might decay?
Thou leav'st me pining and denied,
Coyly thou say'st me nay.
Ev'n as I woo thee to my side,
Thou, importuned to stay,
Like Orpheus' half-recovered bride
Ebb'st from my arms away.
poem by William Watson
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World Strangeness
Strange the world about me lies,
Never yet familiar grown-
Still disturbs me with surprise,
Haunts me like a face half known.
In this house with starry dome,
Floored with gemlike plains and seas,
Shall I never feel at home,
Never wholly be at ease?
On from room to room I stray,
Yet my Host can ne'er espy,
And I know not to this day
Whether guest or captive I.
So, between the starry dome
And the floor of plains and seas,
I have never felt at home,
Never wholly been at ease.
poem by William Watson
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Beauty's Metempsychosis
That beauty such as thine
Can die indeed,
Were ordinance too wantonly malign:
No wit may reconcile so cold a creed
With beauty such as thine.
From wave and star and flower
Some effluence rare
Was lent thee, a divine but transient dower:
Thou yield'st it back from eyes and lips and hair
To wave and star and flower.
Shouldst thou to-morrow die,
Thou still shalt be
Found in the rose and met in all the sky:
And from the ocean's heart shalt sing to me,
Shouldst thou to-morrow die.
poem by William Watson
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Dawn of the Headland
Dawn - and a magical stillness: on earth, quiescence profound;
On the waters a vast Content, as of hunger appeased and stayed;
In the heavens a silence that seems not mere privation of sound,
But a thing with form and body, a thing to be touched and weighed!
Yet I know that I dwell in the midst of the roar of the cosmic wheel,
In the hot collision of Forces, and clangor of boundless Strife,
Mid the sound of the speed of the worlds, the rushing worlds, and the peal
Of the thunder of Life.
poem by William Watson
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