BOOKS.

MR. WATSON'S CORONATION ODE.* MB. WILLIAM WATSON has broken silence with a poem of such fine poetical quality, such elevation of thought and distinction of style, as will go far to reconcile us to his long abstention from the practice of his art. Whatever else of abiding merit may be written, here at least we have a poem wholly worthy of the occasion, dignified yet never frigid in sentiment, ornate yet never sophisticated in diction, instinct with the spirit of sober Imperialism, and marked by the almost unerring felicity of phrase that has always distinguished Mr. Watson's best work.

The Ode opens with a survey of the growth of the Empire,— the gathering of "kingdom in kingdom, sway in oversway, dominion fold in fold," with a special emphasis on Britain's queenship of the seas :—

" Time, and the ocean, and some fostering star

In high cabal have made us what we are, Who stretch one hand to Huron's bearded pines, And one on Kashmir's snowy shoulder lay, And round the streaming of whose raiment shines The iris of the Australasian spray.

For waters have connived at our designs, And winds have plotted with us—"

Not less impressive is the series of terse word-portraits of the greatest of King Edward's forerunners, culminating in the vivid picture of William of Orange— "That worn face, in camps and councils bred, The guest who brought us law and liberty Raised well-nigh from the dead."

The poet then passes to Queen Victoria, and in a fine image forecasts the presence of the mighty dead :—

" Yea, she herself, in whose immediate stead Thou standest, in the shadow of her soul; All these, 0 King, from their seclusion dread, And guarded palace of eternity,

Mix in thy pageant with phantasmal tread, Hear the long waves of acclamation roll, And with yet mightier silence marshal thee To the awful throne thou haul inherited."

• Ode on the Day of the Coronation of King Eduard VII. By William Watson. London : John Lane. pa. 6d.)

From the catalogue of Kings Mr. Watson turns to the "long glories" that "prance and triumph by," with an incidental vindication of such ceremonial :—

"Nature disdains not braveries : why should we The sombre foil to all her splendours be ?"

Next, by way of fitting preparation for the final and culmi- nating passage of the Ode, Mr. Watson gives us what in musical parlance would be called a slow movement-,—a singularly beautiful passage, full of a truly Virgilian magic, and notable for the unforgettable reference to Ireland in its closing lines :—

" And now the pomps have passed and we depart Each to the peace or strife of his own heart. And now the day whose bosom was so high Sinks billowing down: and twinght sorceries change Into remote and strange

What is most known and nigh :

And changelessly the river sends his sigh Down leagues of hope and fear, and pride and shame, And life and death ; dim-journeying passionless To where broad estuary and beaconing nese Look toward the outlands whence our fathers came_ And high on Druid mountains hath the sun Flamed valediction, as the last lights died Beyond that fatal wave, that from our side Sanders the lovely and the lonely Bride Whom we have wedded but have never won."

Night falls, and the poet recalls the "old greatnesses " of the dim past, the "prone regalities," the "kingdoms and thrones

forgotten of the sky," of which he writes— "All these

Have been, and stablisht on their dust we stand."

"So great we are, and old" is the keynote of the poem. We- may stave off "the doom of overlordships " that has brought

low other Empires, but-

" By chinks and crannies, Death, Forbid the doorways, oft-times entereth."

Mr. Watson dreads the condition described by an Elizabethan.

writer as "drowned in security " ; he would rather see the- nation over-anxious than over-confident, and holds, with Milton,.

that the people at large ought to learn-

" What makes a nation happy ; keeps it so ; What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat."

And then comes the final message and warning to England,.— an eloquent appeal to her to combine the pursuit of " efficiency " with adherence to her loftiest ideals :—

" For now the day is unto them that know,

And not henceforth she stumbles on the prize; And yonder march the nations full of eyes. Already is doom a-spinning, if unstirred In leisure of ancient pathways she lose touch Of the hour, and overmuch Recline upon achievement, and be slow To take the world arriving, and forget How perilous are the stature and port that so Invite the arrows, how unslumbering all The hates that watch and crawL Nor must she, like the others, yield up yet The generous dreams ! but rather live to be Saluted in the hearts of men as she Of high and singular election, set Benignant on the mitigated sea; That greatly loving freedom loved to free, And was herself the bridal and embrace

Of strength and conquering grace."

The Ode is addressed to the King, but the personal note is never insisted on. There is none of the language of formal compliment, nothing of the attitudinising courtier, in Mr. Watson's lines. The King, at the moment of his Coronation, stands forward as the central figure of the English race, and, as we have seen, it is to the race that Mr. Watson addresses the warning which forms the core of a very beautiful and im- pressive poem.

We may note in conclusion that Mr. Watson's present poem seems to us to furnish a very happy illustration of the beneficial results of the labor limes. It is ext: emely polished, yet with the exception of one or two slightly recondite or

technical words—such as " regalities " and the use of the word " mitigated " in the closing lines—one is not disconcerted but

delighted by the felicitous evasion of the obvious, by the Virgilian disdain of saying a plain thing in a plain way. Mr. Watson may not belong to the order of poets whose verse is simple, sensuous, and passionate, but he possesses in as high a degree as any writer since Matthew Arnold the "antiseptic of style," the serene classicism of phrase which enables a poet to give dignified and enduring expressica to elevated thought.