The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1901-10-06

The age grew stated with her sterile
Herself waxed weary on her loveless
Men felt ffe's tide. the sweep and surge
And crsved living voice, natural
tone.
From dewy pastures. uplands sweet
A virgin breeze fresnened the jaded day.
It waited Collins lonely vesper-ehine.
II breathed abroad the frugal note of
Gray. ('Poems.' PIP. l39-4l-)
accompany them, every epithet is care
fully chosen, and the note of literary
allusion. fully expressive only to those
acquainted with the authors of whom
mention is made, is struck again and
again with happy effect. "Wordsworth's
Grave is Enthusiastically a very note
worthy poem, and one which was right
" marked bys more than one literary
critic as indicating that its author might
have a very distinguished future before
Akin to the elegy of Tennyson. is the
poem concentrating the centenary OF
Shelley. Mr.. Watson has so far been
most successful when he has been writ
ing about his brother poets His sobri-
ETY. of Judgment his sense of the great
traditions of English literature, and his
precision of language. are especially
suited to such work, and his appreciation
Shelley was his first love (as he has
elsewhere told usl and his early admira-
ton finds a fitting expression IN this
poem, which we regret is overriding for
reproduction in our pages.
g o .
But this is a class of subject soon ex
hausted. One would wish to see Mr..
Watson develop some other theme and
in this respect the longest poem in
''Lachrymae Musarum' marked a new
departure. In The Dream of Man Mr..
cessive victories in every sphere of
knowledge, eliminating in his triumph
over death; and how this triumph, by
by robbing man of all cause alike for
hope and fear. left him a prey to I'M
utterable WEAKNESS and safety, till he
beSaught God to release death once
more:
"And behold his soul rejoiced not,
The breath of whose being was strife,
Seemed but the shadow of life.
mo goal invited and promised
And divinely provocative sh0ne;
And Fear having fled, her sister,
BEST Hope in her train was gone
"And the browning and cope of achieve
Was hell than defeat more dire
The torment. of all things comprised,
The plague of naught-to-desire-
And man the invincible queller,
Man with his foot on his foes.
In boundless safety hung red,
Restless from utter repose-
Victor of nature. victor
OF the prince of the powers of the air,
BY mighty WEAKNESS vanquished,
And crowned with august despair"
-'Lachrymae Musarum,' p. q.
This poem, the moral of which is iden-
teal with that of Browning 'Rephan,
shows a greater strength of imagination
than Mr. Watson has elsewhere dis
played; and though not his best work. it
is perhaps the most full of promise for
the future. The remaining pieces in this
volume are shorter and of less import
ance, but they maintain the high level
of excellence reached by the longer
poem. and serve to complete a volume
of very unusual charm
Space forbids US to quote at greater
length from this volume which all lovers
Of poetry will regret was not planned on
a larger and more ambitious scale. 1t
is for this that Mr.. Watsonis admirers
are now looking So far as he has gone
already we may say freverting to the
that his genius is of real precious metal.
but that the vein is thin one. Thin
veins of ore sometimes broaden and
deepen as they go onward, and il is our
author He has the aspirations. the train
ing. the technique of a true poet; what
he at present lacks is the higher inspi-
ration If he has strength enough for a
sustained effort of ina gination. without
losing the finished manner of his earlier
work then he will be of the company of
the poets whose fame has been and is
so dear to him. OF his prose writings we
need not speak They are. as their title
indicates, the Excursions of a Rhymer' -
into realm which is not his own There
ne mas many equals and superiors; in
qeed. even his literary taste seems to
desert him since we find him Gin the
introduction to his anthology of love