MR. WATSON'S POEMS.* THOUGH we may regret the tone, and

decline to admit the justice, of certain passages in this volume, we have not, and never have had, any intention of levelling the charge of anti- patriotism against the writer, a charge which he anticipates will be revived to his prejudice. Against the republication of the poems nothing can be urged. In regard to their original issue it may, we think, be fairly contended that onoe a great struggle is irrevocably joined, anything that tends to blunt the national resolution is to be deprecated, so long as the conduct of a war is above reproach ; but that, again, is precisely the point on which we cannot expect agreement from Mr. Watson. For our own part, we have always been ready to acknowledge that the action of those who felt deep doubt and pain as to our action in the recent conflict was com- patible with the most sincere, if not the highest, patriotism,— that their resentment with their country was due to the fact that they could not bear to see her, as they believed, in the wrong. The estrangement of a truly patriotic poet from his country during a great national crisis is not a new thing. But we could wish that the attitude of Mr. Watson had approached more closely to that of Wordsworth in the sonnet which he wrote in 1803:- ° England! the time is come when thou should'st wean

Thy heart from its emasculating food; The truth should now be better understood; Old things have been unsettled ; we have seen Fair seed-time, better harvest might have been But for thy trespasses ; and, at this day,

If for Greece, Egypt, India, Africa,

Aught good were destined, thou would'st step between. England! all nations in this charge agree : But worse, more ignorant in love and hate, Far—far more abject, is thine Enemy : Therefore the wise pray for thee, though the freight Of thy offences be a heavy weight : Oh grief that Earth's best hopes rest all with Thee !"

Mr. Watson tells us that " the verses which occupy the ensuing pages were inspired by the hope of assisting in the promotion of a reasonable human feeling towards those who were our adversaries in the late epical conflict "—we prefer that phrase to "ignoble quarrel" used elsewhere and that aim is best achieved in the fine sonnet on " The Enemy " which opens the volume:— "Unskilled in Letters and in Arts unversed ;

Ignorant of empire; bounded in their view By the lone billowing veldt, where they npgrew Amid great silences ; a people nursed Apart—the far-sown seed of them that erst Not Alva's sword could tame; now, blindly hurled Against the march of the majestic world, They fight and die, with dauntless bosoms curet.

Crazed, if you will ; demented, not to yield Ere all be lost ! And yet it seems to me They fought as noblest Englishmen did use To fight, for freedom; and no Briton he, Who to such valour in a desperate field

A knightly salutation can refuse."

Only the home-keeping Jingoes of the music-halls could refrain from endorsing nearly every word of the above sonnet, which reflects the attitude adopted by all the best of those who fought on our side in the war. Nor can any exception be taken to the lines " Past and Present " which follow :—

" When lofty Spain came towering up the seas

This little stubborn land to daunt and quell, The winds of heaven were our auxiliaries, And smote her, that she fell.

Ah, not to-day is Nature on our side !

The mountains and the rivers are our foe. And Nature with the heart of man allied Is hard to overthrow."

Writing of Mr. Watson's noble Coronation Ode last year, we spoke of it as being instinct with the spirit of sober Imperialism, and this spirit animates some of the finest pieces in the collection. In this category we would place the lines

headed " Rome and Another" :—

"She asked for all things, and dominion such As never man had known, The gods first gave; then lightly, touch by touch, O'erthrew her seven-hilled throne.

Imperial Power, that hungerest for the globe, Restrain thy conquering feet, Lest the same Fates that spun thy purple robe Should weave thy winding-sheet."

• For England : Poems Written during Estrangement. By William Wataon. London : John Lane. Pe. 135. net.] The note of many of the ensuing pieces is by no means so re- strained. In reading them one is fain to remember that "to be wroth with those we love doth work like madness in the brain." And yet Mr. Watson's indignation against the majority of his countrymen in their espousal of what he sincerely and passionately believes to have been an unjust quarrel, and his bitter reprobation of the methods adopted in prosecuting it, never extinguish his love for his country or inspire him with that form of Schadenfreude which takes the form of exultation over his country's disasters. Besides, his estrangement is only temporary. As he puts it in his lines to Mr. James Bryce,-

" I lose not hope or faith in this great land, This many-victoried, many-heroed land, Though hope oft sinks, and faith is hard to hold. She that with ruthless John and truthless Charles, And James the despicable, by voice or sword Strove, and not vainly, for her liberties ; She that from him, the humbler of the world, Whose thunderous heel was on submitted thrones, Kept whole and virginal her liberties; She that so joyed at sound of other lands Heaved high with passion for their liberties ; Shall yet win back—'tis thus at least I dream, Being her lover, and dreaming from the heart— Shall yet win back her lost and wandering soul, Shall yet recall herself from banishment ; Shall yet remember—she forgets to-day— How the munificent hands of Life are full Of gifts more covetable an hundredfold Than man's dominion o'er reluctant man.

The Caesars and the Alexanders pass Whilst he that drank the hemlock, he that drank The Cup more dread, on Calvary bill, remain, Servants and mighty conquerors of the world."

Against the gospel of material aggrandisement he utters a weighty protest in " The True Imperialism " :- "Here, while the tide of conquest rolls

Against the distant golden shore, The starved and stunted human souls Are with us more and more.

Vain is your Science, vain your Art, Your triumphs and your glories vain, To feed the hunger of their heart And famine of their brain.

Your savage deserts howling near,

Your wastes of ignorance, vice, and shame,—

Is there no room for victories here, No field for deeds of fame?

Arise and conquer while ye can The foe that in your midst resides, And build within the mind of Man The Empire that abides."

We have already quoted fully, perhaps too fully in view of the slender proportions of this volume, in illustration of the spirit of the singer. We cannot refrain, however, from giving,

as an example of the purely poetic quality of Mr. Watson's

verse, the sonnet entitled " Melancholia " :-

" 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."

Here, it seems to us, the great qualities of Mr. Watson's verse are conspicuously exemplified. Here we have concentration,

dignity, weight without stiffness or rigidity of metre, an un- erring felicity of phrase, a frugal but effective use of allitera- tion, and a sense of pageantry which never degenerates into turgid rhetoric. We may add that in another poem, " Meta-

morphosis," Mr. Watson shows the possession of that rare

gift, of which Tennyson's " Tears, Idle Tears " is perhaps the most notable illustration, of using the medium of blank verse in such a way as to convey the impression of a rhymed lyric measure.