The Poems of William Watson | Page 5

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 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,--