The Poems of William Watson Author:William Watson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE The old rude church, with bare, bald tower, is here; Beneath its shadow high-born Rotha flows ; Rotha, remembering well who slumbers nea... more »r, And with cool murmur lulling his repose. 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 Far from her homestead to the desert bourn, The vagrant soul returning to herself Wearily wise, must needs to him return. To him and to the powers that with him dwell:— Inflowings that divulged not whence they came ; And that secluded Spirit unknowable, The mystery we make darker with a name ; The Somewhat which we name but cannot know, Ev'n as we name a star and only see His quenchless flashings forth, which ever show And ever hide him, and which are not he. Poet who sleepest by this wandering wave ! When thou wast born, what birth-gift hadst thou then ? To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave, The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men ? Vol. i. l c Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine ; Not Shakespeare's cloudless, boundless human view ; Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine ; Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew. What hadst thou that could make so large amends For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed, Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends ?— Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest. From Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze, From Byron's tempest-anger,...« less