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
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

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
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Estrangement

So, without overt breach, we fall apart,
Tacitly sunder--neither you nor I
Conscious of one intelligible Why,
And both, from severance, winning equal smart.
So, with resigned and acquiescent heart,
Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie,
I seem to see an alien shade pass by,
A spirit wherein I have no lot or part.
Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim,
From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn
That June on her triumphant progress goes
Through arched and bannered woodlands; while for him
She is a legend emptied of concern,
And idle is the rumour of the rose.

poem by William Watson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Beethoven

O Master, if immortals suffer aught
Of sadness like to ours, and in like sighs
And with like overflow of darkened eyes
Disburden them, I know not; but methought,
What time to day mine ear the utterance caught
Whereby in manifold melodious wise
Thy heart's unrestful infelicities
Rose like a sea with easeless winds distraught,
That thine seemed angel's grieving, as of one
Strayed somewhere out of heaven, and uttering
Lone moan and alien wail: because he hath
Failed to remember the remounting path,
And singing, weeping, can but weep and sing
Ever, through vasts forgotten of the sun.

poem by William Watson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

History

Here, peradventure, in this mirror glassed,
Who gazes long and well at times beholds
Some sunken feature of the mummied Past,
But oftener only the embroidered folds
And soiled magnificence of her rent robe
Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties
That sweep the dust of æons in our eyes
And with their trailing pride cumber the globe.-
For lo! the high, imperial Past is dead:
The air is full of its dissolvèd bones;
Invincible armies long since vanquishèd,
Kings that remember not their awful thrones,
Powerless potentates and foolish sages,
Impede the slow steps of the pompous ages.

poem by William Watson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

At The Grave Of Charles Lamb, In Edmonton

Not here, O teeming City, was it meet
Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose,
But where the multitudinous life-tide flows
Whose ocean-murmur was to him more sweet
Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat
Of flocks in Spring-time, _there_ should Earth enclose
His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes,
There, 'neath the music of thy million feet.
In love of thee this lover knew no peer.
Thine eastern or thy western fane had made
Fit habitation for his noble shade.
Mother of mightier, nurse of none more dear,
Not here, in rustic exile, O not here,
Thy Elia like an alien should be laid!

poem by William Watson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Mock Self

Few friends are mine, though many wights there be
Who, meeting oft a phantasm that makes claim
To be myself, and hath my face and name,
And whose thin fraud I wink at privily,
Account this light impostor very me.
What boots it undeceive them, and proclaim
Myself myself, and whelm this cheat with shame?
I care not, so he leave my true self free,
Impose not on me also; but alas!
I too, at fault, bewildered, sometimes take
Him for myself, and far from mine own sight,
Torpid, indifferent, doth mine own self pass;
And yet anon leaps suddenly awake,
And spurns the gibbering mime into the night.

poem by William Watson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Vanishings

As one whose eyes have watched the stricken day
Swoon to its crimson death adown the sea,
Turning his face to eastward suddenly
Sees a lack-lustre world all chill and gray,-
Then, wandering sunless whitherso he may,
Feels the first dubious dumb obscurity,
And vague foregloomings of the Dark to be,
Close like a sadness round his glimmering way;
So I, from drifting dreambound on and on
About strange isles of utter bliss, in seas
Whose waves are unimagined melodies,
Rose and beheld the dreamless world anew:
Sad were the fields, and dim with splendours gone
The strait sky-glimpses fugitive and few.

poem by William Watson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!