On Reading Mr. Theodore Watt’s Sonnet, ‘The Sonnet’s Voice’

An art grows up from year to year:
The critic weighs the utmost gains,
The last result, the perfect sphere,
Not the steps, but what remains;

Sees the analogue, ebb and flow,—
Beautiful, yes, look at it near,—
The flow, the ebb returning so,—
It is at last art's perfect sphere.

But not the less our Shakespeare knew
Another way; by full discourse
To show his picture as it grew,
Worked out in many-sided force.

Then when the heart can wish no more,
With a strong couplet bars the door.

poem by William Bell Scott
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Christianity And Paganism

ROME. TIME OF THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

Then face to face the New Faith and the Old,
The new Faith promising endless reign
Beyond the catacombs and martyr's pain;
The mystic doctrines sacraments enfold
The scorn of learning, the contempt of gold.
The Old Faith, fancy's foundling, faith of heart,
Lighting small lamps to Lares, by the art
Of potter or of sculptor bought and sold.

This is the day of Triumph: lo, this hour
Titus the conqueror enters, raised on high
The sacredest of Trophies borne to-day
By brutal soldiers, from them gone the power:
Yet over all the wide world goes the cry,
Awake! ye blind, arise, go hence away!

poem by William Bell Scott
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