The Poems of William Watson | Page 5

life, Their victory being inversely
as their strife; Who capture by refraining from pursuit; Shake not the
bough, yet load their hands with fruit; The earth's high places who
attain to fill, By most indomitably sitting still. While others, full upon
the fortress hurled, Lay fiery siege to the embattled world, Of such rude
arts their natures feel no need; Greatly inert, they lazily succeed; Find
in the golden mean their proper bliss, And doing nothing, never do
amiss; But lapt in men's good graces live, and die By all regretted,
nobody knows why.
Cast in this fortunate Olympian mould, The admirable * * * * behold;
Whom naught could dazzle or mislead, unless 'Twere the wild light of
fatal cautiousness; Who never takes a step from his own door But he
looks backward ere he looks before. When once he starts, it were too
much to say He visibly gets farther on his way: But all allow, he
ponders well his course-- For future uses hoarding present force. The
flippant deem him slow and saturnine, The summed-up phlegm of that
illustrious line; But we, his honest adversaries, who More highly prize
him than his false friends do, Frankly admire that simple mass and
weight-- A solid Roman pillar of the State, So inharmonious with the
baser style Of neighbouring columns grafted on the pile, So proud and
imperturbable and chill, Chosen and matched so excellently ill, He
seems a monument of pensive grace, Ah, how pathetically out of place!
Would that some call he could not choose but heed-- Of private passion
or of public need-- At last might sting to life that slothful power, And
snare him into greatness for an hour!

ART MAXIMS
Often ornateness Goes with greatness; Oftener felicity Comes of
simplicity.
Talent that's cheapest Affects singularity. Thoughts that dive deepest
Rise radiant in clarity.
Life is rough: Sing smoothly, O Bard. Enough, enough, To have found
life hard.
No record Art keeps Of her travail and throes. There is toil on the
steeps,-- On the summits, repose.

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.

THE BALLAD OF THE "BRITAIN'S PRIDE"
It was a skipper of Lowestoft That trawled the northern sea, In a smack
of thrice ten tons and seven, And the _Britain's Pride_ was she. And the
waves were high to windward, And the waves were high to lee, And he
said as he lost his trawl-net, "What is to be, will be."
His craft she reeled and staggered, But he headed her for the hithe, In a
storm that threatened to mow her down As grass is mown by the scythe;
When suddenly through the cloud-rift The moon came sailing soft, And
he saw one mast of a sunken ship Like a dead arm held aloft.
And a voice came faint from the rigging-- "Help! help!" it whispered
and sighed-- And a single form to the sole mast clung, In the roaring
darkness wide. Oh the crew were but four hands all told, On board of
the _Britain's Pride_, And ever "Hold on till daybreak!" Across the
night they cried.
Slowly melted the darkness, Slowly rose the sun, And only the lad in

the rigging Was left, out of thirty-one, To tell the tale of his captain,
The English sailor true, That did his duty and met his death As English
sailors do.
Peace to the gallant spirit, The greatly proved and tried, And to all who
have fed the hungry sea That is still unsatisfied; And honour and glory
for ever, While rolls the unresting tide, To the skipper of little
Lowestoft, And the crew of the _Britain's Pride_.

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