Columbus
(12TH OCTOBER 1492)
From his adventurous prime
He dreamed the dream sublime:
Over his wandering youth
It hung, a beckoning star.
At last the vision fled,
And left him in its stead
The scarce sublimer truth,
The world he found afar.
The scattered isles that stand
Warding the mightier land
Yielded their maidenhood
To his imperious prow.
The mainland within call
Lay vast and virginal:
In its blue porch he stood:
No more did fate allow.
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poem by William Watson
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Lines To Our New Censor
[Mr. Oscar Wilde, having discovered that England is unworthy of him, has announced his resolve to become a naturalised Frenchman.]
And wilt thou, Oscar, from us flee,
And must we, henceforth, wholly sever?
Shall thy laborious _jeux-d'esprit_
Sadden our lives no more for ever?
And all thy future wilt thou link
With that brave land to which thou goest?
Unhappy France! we _used_ to think
She touched, at Sedan, fortune's lowest.
And you're made French as easily
As you might change the clothes you're wearing?
Fancy!--and 'tis so hard to be
A man of sense and modest bearing.
May fortitude beneath this blow
Fail not the gallant Gallic nation!
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poem by William Watson
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The Battle of the Bight
Had I the fabled herb
That brought to life the dead,
Whom would I dare disturb
In his eternal bed?
Great Grenville would I wake,
And with glad tidings make
The soul of mighty Drake
Heave up a glorying head.
As rose the misty sun,
Our men the North Sea scanned,
And each rejoicing gun
Welcomed a Foe at hand,
And thundering its delight,
Opened its mouth outright,
And bit them in the Bight,
The Bight of Helgoland.
With Captains who could each
Do aught but yield or flee;
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poem by William Watson
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The Foresters
Clear as of old the great voice rings to-day,
While Sherwood's oak-leaves twine with Aldworth's bay:
The voice of him the master and the sire
Of one whole age and legion of the lyre,
Who sang his morning-song when Coleridge still
Uttered dark oracles from Highgate Hill,
And with new-launchèd argosies of rhyme
Gilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of time.
Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear
The laurel glorious from that wintry hair-
When he, the sovereign of our lyric day,
In Charon's shallop must be rowed away,
And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar,
The
ave atque vale
from the shore!
To him nor tender nor heroic muse
Did her divine confederacy refuse:
To all its moods the lyre of life he strung,
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poem by William Watson
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A Sunset
Westward a league the city lay, with one
Cloud's imminent umbrage o'er it: when behold,
The incendiary sun
Dropped from the womb o' the vapour, rolled
'Mongst huddled towers and temples, 'twixt them set
Infinite ardour of candescent gold,
Encompassed minaret
And terrace and marmoreal spire
With conflagration: roofs enfurnaced, yet
Unmolten,-columns and cupolas flanked with fire,
Yet standing unconsumed
Of the fierce fervency,-and higher
Than all, their fringes goldenly illumed,
Dishevelled clouds, like massed empurpled smoke
From smouldering forges fumed:
Till suddenly the bright spell broke
With the sun sinking through some palace-floor
And vanishing wholly. Then the city woke,
Her mighty Fire-Dream o'er,
As who from out a sleep is raised
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poem by William Watson
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The Great Misgiving
'NOT ours,' say some, 'the thought of death to dread;
Asking no heaven, we fear no fabled hell:
Life is a feast, and we have banqueted--
Shall not the worms as well?
'The after-silence, when the feast is o'er,
And void the places where the minstrels stood,
Differs in nought from what hath been before,
And is nor ill nor good.'
Ah, but the Apparition--the dumb sign--
The beckoning finger bidding me forgo
The fellowship, the converse, and the wine,
The songs, the festal glow!
And ah, to know not, while with friends I sit,
And while the purple joy is pass'd about,
Whether 'tis ampler day divinelier lit
Or homeless night without;
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poem by William Watson
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Lines (With A Volume Of The Author's Poems Sent To M.R.C.)
Go, Verse, nor let the grass of tarrying grow
Beneath thy feet iambic. Southward go
O'er Thamesis his stream, nor halt until
Thou reach the summit of a suburb hill
To lettered fame not unfamiliar: there
Crave rest and shelter of a scholiast fair,
Who dwelleth in a world of old romance,
Magic emprise and faery chevisaunce.
Tell her, that he who made thee, years ago,
By northern stream and mountain, and where blow
Great breaths from the sea-sunset, at this day
One half thy fabric fain would rase away;
But she must take thee faults and all, my Verse,
Forgive thy better and forget thy worse.
Thee, doubtless, she shall place, not scorned, among
More famous songs by happier minstrels sung;--
In Shakespeare's shadow thou shalt find a home,
Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome,
Or awed by Dante's wintry presence be,
Or won by Goethe's regal suavity,
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poem by William Watson
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Felicity
A squalid, hideous town, where streams run black
With vomit of a hundred roaring mills,-
Hither occasion calls me; and ev'n here,
All in the sable reek that wantonly
Defames the sunlight and deflowers the morn,
One may at least surmise the sky still blue.
Ev'n here, the myriad slaves of the machine
Deem life a boon; and here, in days far sped,
I overheard a kind-eyed girl relate
To her companions, how a favouring chance
By some few shillings weekly had increased
The earnings of her household, and she said:
'So now we are happy, having all we wished,'-
Felicity indeed! though more it lay
In wanting little than in winning all.
Felicity indeed! Across the years
To me her tones come back, rebuking; me,
Spreader of toils to snare the wandering Joy
No guile may capture and no force surprise-
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poem by William Watson
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Our Men
Our men, they are our stronghold,
Our bastioned wall unscaled,
Who, against Hate and Wrong, hold
This Realm that never quailed;
Who bear the noblest burden
Life lays on shoulders broad,
Asking not fame or guerdon,
Asking not gold or laud.
They go where England speeds them;
They laugh and jest at Fate.
They go where England needs them
And dream not they are great,
And oft, 'mid smoke and smother
By blinding warstorm fanned
Sons of our mighty Mother,
They fall that she may stand.
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poem by William Watson
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To James Bromley With 'Wordsworth's Grave
Ere vandal lords with lust of gold accurst
Deface each hallowed hillside we revere--
Ere cities in their million-throated thirst
Menace each sacred mere--
Let us give thanks because one nook hath been
Unflooded yet by desecration's wave,
The little churchyard in the valley green
That holds our Wordsworth's grave.
'Twas there I plucked these elegiac blooms,
There where he rests 'mid comrades fit and few,
And thence I bring this growth of classic tombs,
An offering, friend, to you--
You who have loved like me his simple themes,
Loved his sincere large accent nobly plain,
And loved the land whose mountains and whose streams
Are lovelier for his strain.
It may be that his manly chant, beside
More dainty numbers, seems a rustic tune;
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poem by William Watson
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