The Poems of William Watson | Page 6

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, Or with those masters hardly less
adored Repose, of Rydal and of Farringford; And--like a mortal rapt
from men's abodes Into some skyey fastness of the gods-- Divinely
neighboured, thou in such a shrine Mayst for a moment dream thyself
divine.

THE RAVEN'S SHADOW
Seabird, elemental sprite, Moulded of the sun and spray-- Raven,
dreary flake of night Drifting in the eye of day-- What in common have
ye two, Meeting 'twixt the blue and blue?
Thou to eastward carriest The keen savour of the foam,-- 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 pæan 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 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.

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