Platform Monologues Part 7

which is practically Tennyson, or

The maker of this verse, which shall endure By splendour of its theme, that cannot die,

which, if I mistake not, is echoed Spenser, or--

And ghostly as remembered mirth,

which is largely Tennyson again.

I do not call these plagiarisms, I call them reflections of wide and retentive reading.

William Watson has thus formed a style which is almost perfect. I say "almost," not quite. There are some few mannerisms which we might wish away. He speaks of "greatly inert," "greatly lost in thee," "greatly slain," "doomed splendidly to die," "loudly weak," "immutably prevail,"

and "vainly great," till we are forced to recognize what looks very much like a trick. He has occasional moments of tautology, which may possibly be deliberate, but is none the better for that, as when he says:--

Not mine the rich and showering hand, that strews The facile largess of a stintless muse.

And

The retrospect in Time's reverted eyes.

And worst of all--

"Fair clouds of gulls that _wheel_ and _swerve_ In unanimity divine, With _undulation serpentine_, And wondrous consentaneous _curve_."

He sometimes falls into lines which ring of the mint of Pope--

No guile may capture and no force surprise.

Or--

Defames the sunlight and deflowers the morn.

Or--

Towers to a lily, reddens to a rose.

In one pa.s.sage only do I find him falling, falling, falling into the flattest style of the _Excursion_:--

"I overheard a kind-eyed girl relate To her companions how a favouring chance By some few s.h.i.+llings weekly had increased The earnings of her household."

But as I read this, I murmur to myself those lines from Wordsworth--

"And I have travelled far as Hull to see What clothes he might have left, or other property,"

and wonder how it is that such aberrations can befal even the very man who seems most determined to avoid them.

Watson's second endowment is still one of taste and intellect. It is the gift of literary criticism. The special charm of the great poets is so subtly apprehended by him, and so exquisitely expressed, that it will be a source of much surprise if many of his concise verdicts do not become the household words of students of literature. Let me quote a pa.s.sage from his poem on _Wordsworth's Grave_:--

You who have loved, like me, his simple themes, Loved his sincere large accent n.o.bly plain, And loved the land whose mountains and whose streams Are lovelier for his strain.

It may be that his manly chant, beside More dainty numbers, seems a rustic tune; It may be, thought has broadened, since he died, Upon the century's noon; It may be that we can no longer share The faith which from his fathers he received; It may be that our doom is to despair Where he with joy believed;--

Enough that there is none since risen who sings A song so gotten of the immediate soul, So instant from the vital fount of things Which is our source and goal;

And though at touch of later hands there float More artful tones than from his lyre he drew, Ages may pa.s.s e'er trills another note So sweet, so great, so true.

Take again--

Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine; Not Shakespeare's cloudless, boundless, human view; Not Sh.e.l.ley's flush of rose on peaks divine; Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew.

And these:--

Sh.e.l.ley, the hectic flamelight rose of verse, All colour and all odour and all bloom.

And on Burns--

But as, when thunder crashes nigh, All darkness opes one flaming eye, And the world leaps against the sky, So fiery clear Did the old truths that we pa.s.s by To him appear.

These, then, are the prominent poetical virtues of William Watson, virtues which none can avoid observing--his magnificent power of expression and his literary ac.u.men. He is an intellectual poet, and therefore not devoid of substance. Yet his substance alone would never make him a _vates_. I can imagine that in prose criticisms and in satire he would make a distinguished figure. Here is his answer to Mr. Alfred Austin when the laureate advised him to be patient with the Armenian question:--

"The poet laureate a.s.sured me--first, that whosoever in any circ.u.mstances arraigns this country for anything that she may do or leave undone thereby covers himself with shame; secondly, that although the continued torture, rape, and ma.s.sacre of a Christian people, under the eyes of a Christian continent, may be a lamentable thing, it is best to be patient, seeing that the patience of G.o.d Himself can never be exhausted; and, thirdly, that if I were but with him in his pretty country house, were but comfortably seated 'by the yule log's blaze,'

and joining with him in seasonable conviviality, the enigmas of Providence and the whole mystery of things would presently become transparent to me, and more especially after 'drinking to England' I should be enabled to understand that 'she bides her hour behind the bastioned brine.'"

It would be hard to better that.

But though I call him intellectual, and more artistic than inspired, I have no wish to underrate the intrinsic poetry in such lines as these, on the _Great Misgiving_:--

Ah, but the apparition--the dumb sign-- The beckoning finger bidding me forego The fellows.h.i.+p, the converse, and the wine, The songs, the festal glow!

And, ah, to know not, while with friends I sit, And while the purple joy is pa.s.sed about, Whether 'tis ampler day divinelier lit Or homeless night without.

Nor the graceful fancy in these, from _Beauty's Metempsychosis_:--

From wave and star and flower, Some effluence rare Was lent thee; a divine but transient dower; Thou yield'st it back from eyes and lips and hair To wave and star and flower.

Should'st thou to-morrow die, Thou still shalt be Found in the rose, and met in all the sky; And from the ocean's heart shalt sing to me, Should'st thou to-morrow die.

I have also said that Mr. Watson knows his own strength and his limitations. Let me conclude by quoting a pa.s.sage from his _Apologia_, the very style of which will be in itself the justification of the man whom it argues to justify:--

... Because I have full oft In singers' selves found me a theme of song, Holding these also to be very part Of Nature's greatness....

And though I be to these but as a knoll About the feet of the high mountains, scarce Remarked at all, save when a valley cloud Holds the high mountains hidden, and the knoll Against the clouds shows briefly eminent; Yet, ev'n as they, I, too, with constant heart, And with no light or careless ministry, Have served what seemed the voice; and unprofane Have dedicated to melodious ends All of myself that least ign.o.ble was.

For though of faulty and of erring walk, I have not suffered aught in me of frail To blur my song; I have not paid the world The evil and the insolent courtesy Of offering it my baseness for a gift.

And unto such as think all Art is cold, All music unimpa.s.sioned, if it breathe An ardour not of Eros' lips, and glow With fire not caught from Aphrodite's breast, Be it enough to say, that in Man's life Is room for great emotions unbegot Of dalliance and embracement, unbegot Even of the purer nuptials of the soul; And one not pale of blood, to human touch Not tardily responsive, yet may know A deeper transport and a mightier thrill Than comes of commerce with mortality, When, rapt from all relation with his kind, All temporal and immediate circ.u.mstance, In silence, in the visionary mood That, flas.h.i.+ng light on the dark deep, perceives Order beyond this coil and errancy; Isled from the fretful hour he stands alone, And hears the eternal movement, and beholds Above him and around and at his feet, In million-billowed consentaneousness, The flowing, flowing, flowing of the world.