POETRY.
LAKELAND ONCE MORE.* REGION separate, sacred, of mere and torrent and mountain, Garrulous, petulant beck, sinister, glooming tarn ; Haunt of the vagabond feet of my ever-reverting fancy, Haunt and home of my heart, Cumbrian vales and fells ;
* Copyright. Macmillan and Co. 1894.
Yours of old was the beauty that rounded my hours with a nimbus, Tender and magical light, touching my youth with bloom; You were my earliest passion, and think you my faith shall falter ?
Yea, when Helvellyn is low; yea, when Winander is dry!' For had I not dwelt where Nature bit prattled familiar language, Prose of the hedges and lanes, trite in theme as in word P Here she spake to my spirit in lofty and resonant numbers, Rhythms of epical mood, silences great as her song. Years unto years have been gathered, and rife bath been full
and rapid ; Hither and thither blown, east and west have I fared; Watched in jewelled midnight the Mediterranean twinkling ;- Watched, from Como's wave, pinnacled summits on fire; Heard the tempest beleaguer the bases of savage Tantallon; Heard the thundering tide crash at Tintagel's feet; And fair and stormy fortune my pinnace of life hath weathered, Shocks of calamity borne, shattering onsets of joy : Mine hath been good unstinted, and mine full portion of evil ;
Friendships mine and hates, love and a little fame; But ever to you I return, 0 land in whose mountain portals Rustles my past like leaves, memories brush me like wings, Meets me my alien phantom, the self that is dead and'
vanished,
Echoes meet me and dreams, shades that sigh and depart; And ever, 0 meres and valleys, an aureole haunts you of roselight,
Glamour of luminous hours, wraith of my passion of old, And the brows of eternal Helvellyn are flashed with a virginal' rapture, WILLIAM WATSON..
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