The Poems of William Watson Part 21

But lo the forest is with faded leaves And our two hearts with faded loves bestrown, And in mine ear the weak wind grieves And uttereth moan: "Shed leaves and fallen, fallen loves and shed, And those are dead and these are more than dead; And those have known The springtime, these the lovetime, overthrown, With all fair times and pleasureful that be."

And shall not we, O Time, and shall not we Thy strong self see Brought low and vanquished, And made to bow the knee And bow the head To one that is when thou and thine are fled, The silent-eyed austere Eternity?

III

Behold a new song still the lark doth sing Each morning when he riseth from the gra.s.s, And no man sigheth for the song that was, The melody that yestermorn did bring.

The rose dies and the lily, and no man mourns That nevermore the selfsame flower returns: For well we know a thousand flowers will spring, A thousand birds make music on the wing.

Ay me! fair things and sweet are birds and flowers, The scent of lily and rose in gardens still, The babble of beaked mouths that speak no ill: And love is sweeter yet than flower or bird, Or any odor smelled or ditty heard-- Love is another and a sweeter thing.

But when the music ceaseth in Love's bowers, Who listeneth well shall hear the silence stirred With aftermoan of many a fretful string: For when Love harpeth to the hollow hours, His gladdest notes make saddest echoing.

VANIs.h.i.+NGS

As one whose eyes have watched the stricken day Swoon to its crimson death adown the sea, Turning his face to eastward suddenly Sees a lack-l.u.s.tre world all chill and gray,-- Then, wandering sunless whitherso he may, Feels the first dubious dumb obscurity, And vague foregloomings of the Dark to be, Close like a sadness round his glimmering way; So I, from drifting dreambound on and on About strange isles of utter bliss, in seas Whose waves are unimagined melodies, Rose and beheld the dreamless world anew: Sad were the fields, and dim with splendours gone The strait sky-glimpses fugitive and few.

BEETHOVEN

O Master, if immortals suffer aught Of sadness like to ours, and in like sighs And with like overflow of darkened eyes Disburden them, I know not; but methought, What time to day mine ear the utterance caught Whereby in manifold melodious wise Thy heart's unrestful infelicities Rose like a sea with easeless winds distraught, That thine seemed angel's grieving, as of one Strayed somewhere out of heaven, and uttering Lone moan and alien wail: because he hath Failed to remember the remounting path, And singing, weeping, can but weep and sing Ever, through vasts forgotten of the sun.

G.o.d-SEEKING

G.o.d-seeking thou hast journeyed far and nigh.

On dawn-lit mountain-tops thy soul did yearn To hear His trailing garments wander by; And where 'mid thunderous glooms great sunsets burn, Vainly thou sought'st His shadow on sea and sky; Or gazing up, at noontide, could'st discern Only a neutral heaven's indifferent eye And countenance austerely taciturn.

Yet whom thou soughtest I have found at last; Neither where tempest dims the world below Nor where the westering daylight reels aghast In conflagrations of red overthrow: But where this virgin brooklet silvers past, And yellowing either bank the king-cups blow.

SKYFARING

Drifting through vacant s.p.a.ces vast of sleep, One overtook me like a flying star And whirled me onward in his glistering car.

From shade to shade the winged steeds did leap, And clomb the midnight like a mountain-steep; Till that vague world where men and women are, Ev'n as a rushlight down the gulfs afar, Paled and went out, upswallowed of the deep.

Then I to that ethereal charioteer: "O whither through the vastness are we bound?

O bear me back to yonder blinded sphere!"

Therewith I heard the ends of night resound; And, wakened by ten thousand echoes, found That far-off planet lying all-too near.