Lily-like, white as snow, She was a woman, so Coffin-board, heavy stone, I vex my heart alone, Peace, peace; she cannot hear John Davidson John Davidson was born at Barrhead, Renfrewshire, in 1857. His Ballads and Songs (1895) and New Ballads (1897) attained a sudden but too short-lived popularity, and his great promise was quenched by an apathetic public and by his own growing disillusion and despair. His sombre yet direct poetry never tired of repeating his favorite theme: "Man is but the Universe grown conscious." Davidson died by his own hand at Penzance in 1909. IMAGINATION (From "New Year's Eve") There is a dish to hold the sea, A brazier to contain the sun, A compass for the galaxy, A voice to wake the dead and done! That minister of ministers, Its flame can mingle north and south; The mart of power, the fount of will, Imagination, new and strange In every age, can turn the year; William Watson William Watson was born at Burley-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire, August 2, 1858. He achieved his first wide success through his long and eloquent poems on Wordsworth, Shelley, and Tennyson-poems that attempted, and sometimes successfully, to combine the manners of these masters. The Hope of the World (1897) contains some of his most characteristic verse. It was understood that he would be appointed poet laureate upon the death of Alfred Austin. But some of his "radical" and semi-political poems are supposed to have displeased the powers at Court, and the honor went to Robert Bridges. His best work, which has both dignity and imagination, may be found in Selected Poems, published in 1903 by John Lane Co. SONG1 April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Laugh thy golden laughter, ESTRANGEMENT' So, without, breach, we fall apart, And both, from severance, winning equal smart. A spirit wherein I have no lot or part. Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim, From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn Through arched and bannered woodlands; while for him And idle is the rumour of the rose. 1 1 From The Hope of the World by William Watson. Copyright, 1897, by John Lane Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers. Born in 1859 at Preston, Francis (Joseph) Thompson was educated at Owen's College, Manchester. Later he tried all manner of strange ways of earning a living. He was, at various times, assistant in a boot-shop, medical student, collector for a book seller and homeless vagabond; there was a period in his life when he sold matches on the streets of London. He was discovered in terrible poverty by the editor of a magazine to which he had sent some verses the year before. Almost immediately thereafter he became famous. His exalted mysticism is seen at its purest in "A Fallen Yew" and "The Hound of Heaven." Coventry Patmore, the distinguished poet of an earlier period, says of the latter poem, which is unfortunately too long to quote, "It is one of the very few great odes of which our language can boast." Thompson died, after a fragile and spasmodic life, in St. John's Wood in November, 1907. DAISY Where the thistle lifts a purple crown And the harebell shakes on the windy hill- The hills look over on the South, Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry Two children did we stray and talk She listened with big-lipped surprise, She knew not those sweet words she spake, Oh, there were flowers in Storrington But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face. A berry red, a guileless look, A still word,-strings of sand! For standing artless as the air, She took the berries with her hand, The fairest things have fleetest end, But the rose's scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose. |