POETRY.

AN EPISTLE.

So, into Cornwall you go down, And leave me loitering here in town. For me, the ebb of London's wave, Not ocean-thunder in Cornish cave. My friends (save only one or two) Gone to the glistening marge, like you,— The opera season with blare and din Dying sublime in Lohengrin,— Houses darkened, whose blinded panes All thoughts, save of the dead, preclude,— The parks a puddle of tropic rains,— Clubland a pensive solitude,— For me, now you and yours are flown, The fellowship of books alone !

For you, the snaky wave, upflung With writhing head and hissing tongue „ The weed whose tangled fibres tell Of some inviolate deep-sea dell ; The faultless, secret-chambered shell, Whose sound is an epitome Of all the utterance of the sea; Great, basking, twinkling wastes of brine;.

Far clouds of gulls that wheel and swerve In unanimity divine, With undulation serpentine, And wondrous, consentaneous curve, Flashing in sudden silver sheen, Then melting on the sky-line keen ; The world-forgotten coves that seem Lapt in some magic old sea-dream, Where, shivering off the milk-white foam, Lost airs wander, seeking home, And into clefts and caverns peep, Fissures paven with powdered shell, Recesses of primeval sleep, Tranced with an immemorial spell; The granite fangs eternally

Rending the blanch'd lips of the sea ; The breaker clutching land, then hurled,

Back on its own tormented world ; The mountainous upthunderings, The glorious energy of things, The power, the joy, the cosmic thrill,

Earth's ecstasy made visible,

World-rapture old as Night and new

As sunrise ;—this, all this, for you!

So, by Atlantic breezes fanned, You roam the limits of the land, And I in London's world abide, Poor flotsam on the human tide !- Nay, rather, isled amid the stream— Watching the flood—and, half in dream, Guessing the sources whence it rose, And musing to what Deep it flows.

For still the ancient riddles mar Our joy in man, in leaf, in star.

The Whence and Whither give no rest,. The Wherefore is a hopeless quest; And the dull might who never thinks,— Who, chancing on the sleeping Sphinx,

Passes unchallenged—fares the best

But ill it suits this random verse The high enigmas to rehearse, And touch with desultory tongue Secrets no man from Night hath wrung. We ponder, question, doubt—and pray The Deep to answer Yea or Nay ; And what does the engirdling wave, The nndivulging, yield us, save Aspersion of bewildering spray ? We do but daily on the beach, Writing our little thoughts full large, While Ocean with imperious speech Derides us trifling by the marge. Nay, we are children, who all day Beside the unknown waters play, And dig with small toy-spade the sand, Thinking our trenches wondrous deep, Till twilight falls, and hand-in-hand Nurse takes us home, well tired, to sleep ; Sleep, and forget our toys, and be Lulled by the great unsleeping sea.

Enough !—to Cornwall you go down, And I.tag rhymes in London town.

WILLIAM WATSON.