The Poems of William Watson | Page 6

Thou dost bear unto the west Fragrance from thy woody home, Where perchance a house is thine Odorous of the oozy pine.
Eastward thee thy proper cares, Things of mighty moment, call; Thee to westward thine affairs Summon, weighty matters all: I, where land and sea contest, Watch you eastward, watch you west,
Till, in snares of fancy caught, Mystically changed ye seem, And the bird becomes a thought, And the thought becomes a dream, And the dream, outspread on high, Lords it o'er the abject sky.
Surely I have known before Phantoms of the shapes ye be-- Haunters of another shore 'Leaguered by another sea. There my wanderings night and morn Reconcile me to the bourn.
There the bird of happy wings Wafts the ocean-news I crave; Rumours of an isle he brings Gemlike on the golden wave: But the baleful beak and plume Scatter immelodious gloom.
Though the flow'rs be faultless made, Perfectly to live and die-- Though the bright clouds bloom and fade Flow'rlike 'midst a meadowy sky-- Where this raven roams forlorn Veins of midnight flaw the morn.
He not less will croak and croak As he ever caws and caws, Till the starry dance he broke, Till the sphery p?an pause, And the universal chime Falter out of tune and time.
Coils the labyrinthine sea Duteous to the lunar will, But some discord stealthily Vexes the world-ditty still, And the bird that caws and caws Clasps creation with his claws.

LUX PERDITA
Thine were the weak, slight hands That might have taken this strong soul, and bent Its stubborn substance to thy soft intent, And bound it unresisting, with such bands As not the arm of envious heaven had rent.
Thine were the calming eyes That round my pinnace could have stilled the sea, And drawn thy voyager home, and bid him be Pure with their pureness, with their wisdom wise, Merged in their light, and greatly lost in thee.
But thou--thou passed'st on, With whiteness clothed of dedicated days, Cold, like a star; and me in alien ways Thou leftest following life's chance lure, where shone The wandering gleam that beckons and betrays.

ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES
She stands, a thousand-wintered tree, By countless morns impearled; Her broad roots coil beneath the sea, Her branches sweep the world; Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed, Clothe the remotest strand With forests from her scatterings made, New nations fostered in her shade, And linking land with land.
O ye by wandering tempest sown 'Neath every alien star, Forget not whence the breath was blown That wafted you afar! For ye are still her ancient seed On younger soil let fall-- Children of Britain's island-breed, To whom the Mother in her need Perchance may one day call.

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 ?ons 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.

THE EMPTY NEST
I saunter all about the pleasant place You made thrice pleasant, O my friends, to me; But you are gone where laughs in radiant grace That thousand-memoried unimpulsive sea. To storied precincts of the southern foam, Dear birds of passage, ye have taken wing, And ah! for me, when April wafts you home, The spring will more than ever be the spring Still lovely, as of old, this haunted ground; Tenderly, still, the autumn sunshine falls; And gorgeously the woodlands tower around, Freak'd with wild light at golden intervals: Yet, for the ache your absence leaves, O friends, Earth's lifeless pageantries are poor amends.

IRELAND
(DECEMBER 1, 1890)
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.

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,