The Poems of William Watson Part 11

Behind Helm Crag and Silver Howe the sheen Of the retreating day is less and less.

Soon will the lordlier summits, here unseen, Gather the night about their nakedness.

The half-heard bleat of sheep comes from the hill, Faint sounds of childish play are in the air.

The river murmurs past. All else is still.

The very graves seem stiller than they were.

Afar though nation be on nation hurled, And life with toil and ancient pain depressed, Here one may scarce believe the whole wide world Is not at peace, and all man's heart at rest.

Rest! 'twas the gift _he_ gave; and peace! the shade _He_ spread, for spirits fevered with the sun.

To him his bounties are come back--here laid In rest, in peace, his labour n.o.bly done.

LACHRYMae MUSARUM AND OTHER POEMS

TO RICHARD HOLT HUTTON AND MEREDITH TOWNSEND

WITH GRAt.i.tUDE

LACHRYMae MUSARUM

(6TH OCTOBER 1892)

Low, like another's, lies the laurelled head: The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er: Carry the last great bard to his last bed.

Land that he loved, thy n.o.blest voice is mute.

Land that he loved, that loved him! nevermore Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-sh.o.r.e, Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit, Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread, The master's feet shall tread.

Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute: The singer of undying songs is dead.

Lo, in this season pensive-hued and grave, While fades and falls the doomed, reluctant leaf From withered Earth's fantastic coronal, With wandering sighs of forest and of wave Mingles the murmur of a people's grief For him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall.

He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and showers.

For us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame, And soon the winter silence shall be ours: Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame Crowns with no mortal flowers.

Rapt though he be from us, Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus; Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach; Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach; Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home; Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech; Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam, Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave, His equal friends.h.i.+p crave: And G.o.dlike spirits hail him guest, in speech Of Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome.

What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears, To save from visitation of decay?

Not in this temporal sunlight, now, that bay Blooms, nor to perishable mundane ears Sings he with lips of transitory clay; For he hath joined the chorus of his peers In habitations of the perfect day: His earthly notes a heavenly audience hears, And more melodious are henceforth the spheres, Enriched with music stol'n from earth away.

He hath returned to regions whence he came.

Him doth the spirit divine Of universal loveliness reclaim.

All nature is his shrine.

Seek him henceforward 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, There, in the rhythm and music of the Whole; Yea, and for ever in the human soul Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain.

For lo! creation's self is one great choir, And what is nature's order but the rhyme 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 Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.

Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, Extort her crimson secret from the rose, But ask not of the Muse that she disclose The meaning of the riddle of her might: Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows.

The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped; Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said;-- Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, That held in trance the ancient Attic sh.o.r.e, And charms the ages with the notes that o'er All woodland chants immortally prevail!

And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled, He with diviner silence dwells instead, And on no earthly sea with transient roar, Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail, But far beyond our vision and our hail Is heard for ever and is seen no more.

No more, O 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 splendour 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, With soul as healthful as the poignant brine, Wide as his skies and radiant as his seas, Starry from haunts of his Familiars nine, Glorious Maeonides.

Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet: Thou hast forgotten, but can I forget?

The accents of thy pure and sovereign tongue, Are they not ever goldenly impressed On memory's palimpsest?

I see the 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 G.o.d.

The seasons change, the winds they s.h.i.+ft and veer; The gra.s.s of yesteryear Is dead; the birds depart, the groves decay: Empires dissolve and peoples disappear: Song pa.s.ses not away.

Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, And kings a dubious legend of their reign; The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust: The poet doth remain.

Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive; And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime, Like Virgil shalt thy race and tongue survive, Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time, Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme, And rich with sweets from every Muse's hive; While to the measure of the cosmic rune For purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune, And heed no more the hum of idle praise In that great calm our tumults cannot reach, Master who crown'st our immelodious days With flower of perfect speech.

DEDICATION OF "THE DREAM OF MAN"

TO LONDON, MY HOSTESS

City that waitest to be sung,-- For whom no hand To mighty strains the lyre hath strung In all this land, Though mightier theme the mightiest ones Sang not of old, The thrice three sisters' G.o.dlike sons With lips of gold,-- Till greater voice thy greatness sing In loftier times, Suffer an alien muse to bring Her votive rhymes.

Yes, alien in thy midst am I, Not of thy brood; The nursling of a norland sky Of rougher mood: To me, thy tarrying guest, to me, 'Mid thy loud hum, Strayed visions of the moor or sea Tormenting come.

Above the thunder of the wheels That hurry by, From lapping of lone waves there steals A far-sent sigh;

And many a dream-reared mountain crest My feet have trod, There where thy Minster in the West Gropes toward G.o.d.

Yet, from thy presence if I go, By woodlands deep Or ocean-fringes, thou, I know, Wilt haunt my sleep; Thy restless tides of life will foam, Still, in my sight; Thy imperturbable dark dome Will crown my night.

O sea of living waves that roll On golden sands, Or break on tragic reef and shoal 'Mid fatal lands; O forest wrought of living leaves, Some filled with Spring, Where joy life's festal raiment weaves And all birds sing,-- Some trampled in the miry ways, Or whirled along By fury of tempestuous days,-- Take thou my song!

For thou hast scorned not heretofore The gifts of rhyme I dropped, half faltering, at thy door, City sublime; And though 'tis true I am but guest Within thy gate, Unto thy hands I owe the best Awards of fate.

Imperial hostess! thanks from me To thee belong: O living forest, living sea, Take thou my song!

THE DREAM OF MAN

To the eye and the ear of the Dreamer This Dream out of darkness flew, Through the horn or the ivory portal, But he wist not which of the two.

It was the Human Spirit, Of all men's souls the Soul, Man the unwearied climber, That climbed to the unknown goal.

And up the steps of the ages, The difficult steep ascent, Man the unwearied climber Pauseless and dauntless went.

aeons rolled behind him With thunder of far retreat, And still as he strove he conquered And laid his foes at his feet.

Inimical powers of nature, Tempest and flood and fire, The spleen of fickle seasons That loved to baulk his desire, The breath of hostile climates, The ravage of blight and dearth, The old unrest that vexes The heart of the moody earth, The genii swift and radiant Sabreing heaven with flame, He, with a keener weapon, The sword of his wit, overcame.

Disease and her ravening offspring, Pain with the thousand teeth, He drave into night primeval, The nethermost worlds beneath, Till the Lord of Death, the undying, Ev'n Asrael the King, No more with Furies for heralds Came armed with scourge and sting, But gentle of voice and of visage, By calm Age ushered and led, A guest, serenely featured, Entering, woke no dread.

And, as the rolling aeons Retreated with pomp of sound, Man's spirit, grown too lordly For this mean orb to bound, By arts in his youth undreamed of His terrene fetters broke, With enterprise ethereal Spurning the natal yoke, And, stung with divine ambition, And fired with a glorious greed, He annexed the stars and the planets And peopled them with his seed.

Then said he, "The infinite Scripture I have read and interpreted clear, And searching all worlds I have found not My sovereign or my peer.

In what room of the palace of nature Resides the invisible G.o.d?

For all her doors I have opened, And all her floors I have trod.