lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICAL POETRYof his invention than mortified by the prostitutionof his genius." Watson's poems on public themeschallenged the popular prejudices of his day; hiselegies on poets are clear-cut characterisations of thepoet's work not unmingled with censure of currentfashions and tendencies. He is the last of our greatoratorical poets, his highest achievement in this kindthe final section of The Father of the Forest. It is insong that he falls short of the highest. For even hissongs leave the impression of an effect deliberatelyaimed at and achieved, of a peroration rather than apure jet of song, a moment of self-revelation. Yetone of his sonnets has always left with me the feelingof such a moment of unselfconscious sincerity, Melancholia.The picture evoked is worthy of Diirer orsuggests the Japanese print, The Wave: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 waveDown the steep shingle, and the hollow speechOf murmurous cavern lips, nor other breachOf ancient silence. None was with me saveThoughts that were neither glad nor sweet nor brave,But restless comrades each the foe of each.And I beheld the waters in their mightWrithe as a dragon by some great spell curbedAnd foiled ; and one lone sail; and over meThe everlasting taciturnity ;The august, inhospitable, inhuman night,Glittering magnificently unperturbed.If Sir William Watson was the most obvious successorto the tradition of the Laureateship as Tennysonhad handed it on, ennobling it in the transmission, hispoetry oratorical in the dignified, classical manner ofBurke and Pitt and Disraeli and Gladstone, the new134