The Poems of William Watson | Page 3

grant of liberty, obtain; Respited
for a little space, To go back into bonds again.

A CHILD'S HAIR
A letter from abroad. I tear Its sheathing open, unaware What treasure
gleams within; and there-- Like bird from cage-- Flutters a curl of
golden hair Out of the page.
From such a frolic head 'twas shorn! ('Tis but five years since he was
born.) Not sunlight scampering over corn Were merrier thing. A child?
A fragment of the morn, A piece of Spring!
Surely an ampler, fuller day Than drapes our English skies with grey--
A deeper light, a richer ray Than here we know-- To this bright tress
have given away Their living glow.
For Willie dwells where gentian flowers Make mimic sky in mountain
bowers; And vineyards steeped in ardent hours Slope to the wave
Where storied Chillon's tragic towers Their bases lave;

And over piny tracts of Vaud The rose of eve steals up the snow; And
on the waters far below Strange sails like wings Half-bodilessly come
and go, Fantastic things;
And tender night falls like a sigh On _châlet_ low and _château_ high;
And the far cataract's voice comes nigh, Where no man hears; And
spectral peaks impale the sky On silver spears.
Ah, Willie, whose dissevered tress Lies in my hand!--may you possess
At least one sovereign happiness, Ev'n to your grave; One boon than
which I ask naught less, Naught greater crave:
May cloud and mountain, lake and vale, Never to you be trite or stale
As unto souls whose wellsprings fail Or flow defiled, Till Nature's
happiest fairy-tale Charms not her child!
For when the spirit waxes numb, Alien and strange these shows
become, And stricken with life's tedium The streams run dry, The
choric spheres themselves are dumb, And dead the sky,--
Dead as to captives grown supine, Chained to their task in sightless
mine: Above, the bland day smiles benign, Birds carol free, In
thunderous throes of life divine Leaps the glad sea;
But they--their day and night are one. What is't to them, that rivulets
run, Or what concern of theirs the sun? It seems as though Their
business with these things was done Ages ago:
Only, at times, each dulled heart feels That somewhere, sealed with
hopeless seals, The unmeaning heaven about him reels, And he lies
hurled Beyond the roar of all the wheels Of all the world.
* * * * *
On what strange track one's fancies fare! To eyeless night in sunless
lair 'Tis a far cry from Willie's hair; And here it lies-- Human, yet
something which can ne'er Grow sad and wise:
Which, when the head where late it lay In life's grey dusk itself is grey,
And when the curfew of life's day By death is tolled, Shall forfeit not
the auroral ray And eastern gold.

THE KEY-BOARD
Five-and-thirty black slaves, Half-a-hundred white, All their duty but to
sing For their Queen's delight, Now with throats of thunder, Now with
dulcet lips, While she rules them royally With her finger-tips!
When she quits her palace, All the slaves are dumb-- Dumb with dolour

till the Queen Back to Court is come: Dumb the throats of thunder,
Dumb the dulcet lips, Lacking all the sovereignty Of her finger-tips.
Dusky slaves and pallid, Ebon slaves and white, When the Queen was
on her throne How you sang to-night! Ah, the throats of thunder! Ah,
the dulcet lips! Ah, the gracious tyrannies Of her finger-tips!
Silent, silent, silent, All your voices now; Was it then her life alone Did
your life endow? Waken, throats of thunder! Waken, dulcet lips!
Touched to immortality By her finger-tips.

"SCENTLESS FLOW'RS I BRING THEE"
Scentless flow'rs I bring thee--yet In thy bosom be they set; In thy
bosom each one grows Fragrant beyond any rose.
Sweet enough were she who could, In thy heart's sweet neighbourhood,
Some redundant sweetness thus Borrow from that overplus.

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.

TO ----
(WITH A VOLUME OF EPIGRAMS)
Unto the Lady of The Nook Fly, tiny book. There thou hast
lovers--even thou! Fly thither now.
Seven years hast thou for honour yearned, And scant praise earned; But
ah! to win, at last, such friends, Is full amends.

ON EXAGGERATED DEFERENCE TO FOREIGN LITERARY
OPINION
What! and shall _we_,