and Other Poems (1894); The Father of the Forest and Other Poems (1895); The Year of Shame (including The Purple East, 1897); Collected Poems (1898); For England (1904). There is scarcely a dissenting voice to the chorus that has hailed Watson as the foremost living English poet, next to Swinburne. Even before 1892 Tennyson had chosen him out for commendation. "Only a great poet," says the Spectator, "could have written. that line [the last line in the Prelude to the Hymn of the Sea]. The line seems to us the greatest which even great poets have written. Milton never conceived a more delicate and exquisite symbol of the awakening of youth to the beauty of a world, to which it contributes almost as much loveliness as it perceives in it, than the 'wondering rose' of Mr. Watson's." WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE. The old, rude church, with bare, bald tower, is here; Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near. His hills, his lakes, his streams are with him yet. Surely the heart that read her own heart clear Nature forgets not soon: 'tis we forget. We that with vagrant soul his fixity Have slighted; faithless, done his deep faith wrong; Left him for poorer loves, and bowed the knee To misbegotten, strange new gods of song. Yet, led by hollow ghost or beckoning elf Wearily wise, must needs to him return. To him and to the power that with him dwell · The mystery we make darker with a name; The somewhat which we name but cannot know, His quenchless flashings forth, which ever show LACHRYME MUSARUM. (October 6, 1892.) Low, like another's, lies the laurelled head: Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute: So, in this season pensive-hued and grave, For him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall. He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and showers. And soon the winter silence shall be ours: Rapt though he be from us, Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus; Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach; His equal friendship crave: And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speech What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears, Not in this temporal sunlight, now, that bay His earthly notes a heavenly audience hears, He hath returned to regions whence he came. Of universal loveliness reclaim. All nature is his shrine. Seek him hence forward in the wind and sea, In earth's and air's emotion or repose, In every star's august serenity, And in the rapture of the flaming rose. There seek him, if ye would not seek in vain, Yea, and forever in the human soul Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain. For lo! creation's self is one great choir, Whereto the worlds keep time, And all things move with all things from their prime? Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre? In far retreats of elemental mind Obscurely comes and goes The imperative breath of song, that as the wind Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, No more, oh, never now, Lord of the lofty and the tranquil brow Whereon nor snows of time Have fall'n, nor wintry rime, Shall men behold thee, sage and mage sublime. Once, in his youth obscure, The maker of this verse, which shall endure By splendor of its theme that cannot die, Beheld thee eye to eye, And touched through thee the hand Of every hero of thy race divine, Ev'n to the sire of all the laurelled line, The sightless wanderer on the Ionian strand, Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet: The accents of thy pure and sovereign tongue, VOL. XXIV.-4 On memory's palimpsest? I see thy wizard locks like night that hung, I tread the floor thy hallowing feet have trod; I see the hands a nation's lyre that strung, The eyes that looked through life and gazed on God. Is dead; the birds depart, the groves decay: Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive; And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime, And rich with sweets from every Muse's hive; HOW WEARY IS OUR HEART. Of kings and courts, of kingly, courtly ways Of ceremonious embassies that hold |