SIR WILLIAM WATSON.t
Is it because it is an old favourite with me that I cannot help thinking Sir William Watson's " The Father of the Forest " so very much the best poem in the present collection Y This
ode to a yew tree is a really admirable piece of work, conceived and sustained in the grand manner, full of dignity and assur- ance and lightened by a good allowance of felicitous single phrases. The effect of the poem is cumulative and compact of all its several elements, and therefore quotation gives a garbled version of its merits. Two verses may, perhaps, at least help the reader already familiar with the poem to recall its measured excellences :— "Now fromhese sinews, year by year, Strength and the lust of life depart ; Full of mortality is here
The cavern that was once my heart I Me, with blind arm, in season duc, Let the aerial woodman hew.
For not though mightiest mortals
The starry chariot hangs delayed. His axle is uncooled, nor shall
The thunder of His wheels be stayed. A changeless pace His coursers keep, And halt not at the wells of sleep."
Some of the epigrams with which the book ends are ingenious.
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