Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VII. Descriptive: Narrative. 1904. | | | | Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great Writers | | From “Wordsworth’s Grave” | | William Watson (1858–1935) |
| | | 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? | |
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| Not Milton’s keen, translunar music thine; | 5 |
| Not Shakespeare’s cloudless, boundless human view; | |
| Not Shelley’s flush of rose on peaks divine; | |
| Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew. | |
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| What hadst thou that could make so large amends | |
| For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed, | 10 |
| Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends?— | |
| Thou hadst for weary feet the gift of rest. | |
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| From Shelley’s dazzling glow or thunderous haze, | |
| From Byron’s tempest-anger, tempest-mirth, | |
| Men turned to thee and found—not blast and blaze, | 15 |
| Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth. | |
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| Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower, | |
| There in white languors to decline and cease; | |
| But peace whose names are also rapture, power, | |
| Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of peace. | 20 | | | |
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