Song

APRIL, April,

Laugh thy girlish laughter;

Then, the moment after,

Weep thy girlish tears!

April, that mine ears

Like a lover greetest,

If I tell thee, sweetest,

All my hopes and fears,

April, April,

Laugh thy golden laughter,

But, the moment after,

Weep thy golden tears!

Sir William Watson

World-Strangeness

STRANGE the world about me lies,

Never yet familiar grown --

Still disturbs me with surprise,

Haunts me like a face half known.

In this house with starry dome,

Floored with gemlike plains and seas,

Shall I never feel at home,

Never wholly be at ease?

On from room to room I stray,

Yet my Host can ne'er espy,

And I know not to this day

Whether guest, or captive I.

So, betwixt the starry dome

And the floor of plains and seas,

I have never felt at home,

Never wholly been at ease.

Sir William Watson

England, My Mother

I

ENGLAND my mother,

Wardress of waters,

Builder of peoples,

Maker of men --

Hast thou yet leisure

Left for the muses?

Heed'st thou the songsmith

Forging the rime?

Deafened with tumults,

How canst thou hearken?

Strident is faction,

Demos is loud.

Lazurus, hungry,

Menaces Dives;

Labor the giant

Chafes in his hold.

Yet do the songsmiths

Quit not their forges;

Still on life's anvil

Forge they the rime.

Still the rapt faces

Glow from the furnace:

Breath of the smithy

Scorches their brows.

Yea, and thou hear'st them?

So shall the hammers

Fashion not vainly

Verses of gold.

II

Lo, with the ancient

Roots of man's nature,

Twines the eternal

Passion of song.

Ever Love fans it,

Ever Life feeds it;

Time cannot age it,

Death cannot slay.

Deep in the world-heart

Stands its foundations,

Tangled with all things,

Twin-made with all.

Nay, what is Nature's

Self but an endless

Strife toward music,

Euphony, rime?

Trees in their blooming,

Tides in their flowing,

Stars in their circling,

Tremble with song.

God on his throne is

Eldest of poets;

Unto His measures

Moveth the Whole.

III

Therefore deride not

Speech of the muses,

England my mother,

Maker of men.

Nations are mortal,

Fragile is greatness;

Fortune may fly thee,

Song shall not fly.

Song the all-girdling,

Song cannot perish,

Men shall make music,

Man shall give ear.

Not while the choric

Chant of creation

Floweth from all things,

Poured without pause,

Cease we to echo

Faintly the descant

Whereto forever

Dances the world.

IV

So let the songsmith

Proffer his rime-gift

England my mother,

Maker of men.

Gray grows thy count'nance,

Full of the ages;

Time on thy forehead

Sits like a dream:

Song is the potion

All things renewing,

Youth's one elixir,

Fountain of morn.

Thou, at the world-loom

Weaving thy future,

Fitly may'st temper

Toil with delight.

Deemest thou, only

Labor is earnest?

Grave is all beauty,

Sacred all joy.

Song is not bauble --

Slight not the songsmith,

England my mother,

Maker of men.

Sir William Watson

The Sovereign Poet

HE sits above the clang and dust of Time,

With the world's secret trembling on his lip.

He asks not converse or companionship

In the cold starlight where thou canst not climb.

The undelivered tidings in his breast

Suffer him not to rest.

He sees afar the immemorable throng,

And binds the scattered ages with a song.

The glorious riddle of his rhythmic breath,

His might, his spell, we know not what they be;

We only feel, whate'er he uttereth,

This savors not of death,

This hath a relish of eternity.

Sir William Watson

Ode in May

LET me go forth, and share

The overflowing Sun

With one wise friend, or one

Better than wise, being fair,

Where the pewit wheels and dips

On the heights of bracken and ling,

And Earth, unto her leaflet tips,

Tingles with the Spring.

What is so sweet and dear

As a prosperous morn in May,

The confident prime of the day,

And the dauntless youth of the year,

When nothing that asks for bliss,

Asking aright, is denied,

And half of the world a bridegroom is,

And half of the world a bride?

The Song of Mingling flows,

Grave, ceremonial, pure,

As once, from lips that endure,

The cosmic descant rose,

When the temporal lord of life,

Going his golden way,

Had taken a wondrous maid to wife

That long had said him nay.

For of old the Sun, our sire,

Came wooing the mother of men,

Earth, that was virginal then

Vestal fire to his fire.

Silent her bosom and coy,

But the strong god sued and press'd;

And born of their starry nuptial joy

Are all that drink of her breast.

And the triumph of him that begot,

And the travail of her that bore,

Behold they are evermore

As warp and weft in our lot.

We are children of spendour and flame,

Of shuddering, also, and tears.

Magnificent out of the dust we came,

And abject from the Spheres.

O bright irresistible lord!

We are fruit of Earth's womb, each one,

And fruit of thy loins, O Sun,

Whence first was the seed outpour'd.

To thee as our Father we bow,

Forbidden thy Father to see,

Who is older and greater than thou, as thou

Are greater and older than we.

Thou art but as a word of his speech;

Thou art but as a wave of his hand;

Thou art brief as a glitter of sand

'Twixt tide and tide on his beach;

Thou art less than a spark of his fire,

Or a moment's mood of his soul:

Thou art lost in the notes on the lips of his choir

That chant the chant of the Whole.

Sir William Watson

The Eternal Search

MY little maiden two years old, just able

To tower full half a head above the table,

With inquisition keen must needs explore

Whatever in my dwelling hath a door,

Whatever is behind a curtain hid,

Or lurks, a rich enigma, 'neath a lid.

So soon is the supreme desire confessed,

To probe the unknown! So soon begins the quest,

That never ends until asunder fall

The locks and bolts of the Last Door of All.

Sir William Watson

Thomas Hood

NO courtier this, and naught to courts he owed,

Fawned not on thrones, hymned not the great and callous,

Yet, in one strain, that few remember, showed

He had the password of King Oberon's palace.

And seeing a London seamstress's gray fate,

He of a human heartstring made a thread,

And stitched him such a royal robe of state

That Eastern Kings are poorlier habited.

He saw wan Woman toil with famished eyes;

He saw her bound, and strove to sing her free.

He saw her fall'n; and wrote "The Bridge of Sighs" --

And on it crossed to immortality.

Sir William Watson