Ireland
In the wild and lurid desert, in the thunder-travelled ways,
'Neath the night that ever hurries to the dawn that still delays,
There she clutches at illusions, and she seeks a phantom goal
With the unattaining passion that consumes the unsleeping soul:
And calamity enfolds her, like the shadow of a ban,
And the niggardness of Nature makes the misery of man:
And in vain the hand is stretched to lift her, stumbling in the gloom,
While she follows the mad fen-fire that conducts her to her doom.
poem by William Watson
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The Lute-Player
She was a lady great and splendid,
I was a minstrel in her halls.
A warrior like a prince attended
Stayed his steed by the castle walls.
Far had he fared to gaze upon her.
'O rest thee now, Sir Knight,' she said.
The warrior wooed, the warrior won her,
In time of snowdrops they were wed.
I made sweet music in his honour,
And longed to strike him dead.
I passed at midnight from her portal,
Throughout the world till death I rove:
Ah, let me make this lute immortal
With rapture of my hate and love!
poem by William Watson
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The Sovereign Poet
HE sits above the clang and dust of Time,
With the world's secret trembling on his lip.
He asks not converse or companionship
In the cold starlight where thou canst not climb.
The undelivered tidings in his breast
Suffer him not to rest.
He sees afar the immemorable throng,
And binds the scattered ages with a song.
The glorious riddle of his rhythmic breath,
His might, his spell, we know not what they be;
We only feel, whate'er he uttereth,
This savors not of death,
This hath a relish of eternity.
poem by William Watson
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On Landor's 'Hellenics
Come hither, who grow cloyed to surfeiting
With lyric draughts o'ersweet, from rills that rise
On Hybla not Parnassus mountain: come
With beakers rinsed of the dulcifluous wave
Hither, and see a magic miracle
Of happiest science, the bland Attic skies
True-mirrored by an English well;-no stream
Whose heaven-belying surface makes the stars
Reel, with its restless idiosyncrasy;
But well unstirred, save when at times it takes
Tribute of lover's eyelids, and at times
Bubbles with laughter of some sprite below.
poem by William Watson
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Life Without Health
Behold life builded as a goodly house
And grown a mansion ruinous
With winter blowing through its crumbling walls!
The master paceth up and down his halls,
And in the empty hours
Can hear the tottering of his towers
And tremor of their bases underground.
And oft he starts and looks around
At creaking of a distant door
Or echo of his footfall on the floor,
Thinking it may be one whom he awaits
And hath for many days awaited,
Coming to lead him through the mouldering gates
Out somewhere, from his home dilapidated.
poem by William Watson
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Lines In A Flyleaf Of 'Christabel
Inhospitably hast thou entertained,
O Poet, us the bidden to thy board,
Whom in mid-feast, and while our thousand mouths
Are one laudation of the festal cheer,
Thou from thy table dost dismiss, unfilled.
Yet loudlier thee than many a lavish host
We praise, and oftener thy repast half-served
Than many a stintless banquet, prodigally
Through satiate hours prolonged; nor praise less well
Because with tongues thou hast not cloyed, and lips
That mourn the parsimony of affluent souls,
And mix the lamentation with the laud.
poem by William Watson
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Thomas Hood
NO courtier this, and naught to courts he owed,
Fawned not on thrones, hymned not the great and callous,
Yet, in one strain, that few remember, showed
He had the password of King Oberon's palace.
And seeing a London seamstress's gray fate,
He of a human heartstring made a thread,
And stitched him such a royal robe of state
That Eastern Kings are poorlier habited.
He saw wan Woman toil with famished eyes;
He saw her bound, and strove to sing her free.
He saw her fall'n; and wrote 'The Bridge of Sighs' -
And on it crossed to immortality.
poem by William Watson
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The Glimpse
Just for a day you crossed my life's dull track,
Put my ignobler 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.
poem by William Watson
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To Austin Dobson
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.
poem by William Watson
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The River
I
As drones a bee with sultry hum
When all the world with heat lies dumb,
Thou dronest through the drowsèd lea,
To lose thyself and find the sea.
As fares the soul that threads the gloom
Toward an unseen goal of doom,
Thou farest forth all witlessly,
To lose thyself and find the sea.
II
My soul is such a stream as thou,
Lapsing along it heeds not how;
In one thing only unlike thee,-
Losing itself, it finds no sea.
Albeit I know a day shall come
[...] Read more
poem by William Watson
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