C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Melancholia

From ‘The Poems of William Watson’ (2 vols.)

IN the cold starlight, on the barren beach,

Where to the stones the rent sea-tresses clave,

I heard the long hiss of the backward wave

Down the steep shingle, and the hollow speech

Of murmurous cavern-lips, nor other breach

Of ancient silence. None was with me, save

Thoughts that were neither glad nor sweet nor brave,

But restless comrades, each the foe of each.

And I beheld the waters in their might

Writhe as a dragon by some great spell curbed

And foiled; and one lone sail; and over me

The everlasting taciturnity;

The august, inhospitable, inhuman night,

Glittering magnificently unperturbed.