(_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,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.
Its flame can mingle north and south;
Its accent with the thunder strive;
The ruddy sentence of its mouth
Can make the ancient dead alive.
The mart of power, the fount of will,
The form and mould of every star,
The source and bound of good and ill,
The key of all the things that are,
Imagination, new and strange
In every age, can turn the year;
Can shift the poles and lightly change
The mood of men, the world's career.
_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 is notable for its
dignity and moulded imagination, may be found in _Selected Poems_,
published in 1903 by John Lane Co.