William Watson Poems

April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
...

APRIL, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
...

SHE stands, a thousand-wintered tree,
By countless morns impearled;
Her broad roots coil beneath the sea,
Her branches sweep the world;
...

That beauty such as thine
Can die indeed,
Were ordinance too wantonly malign:
No wit may reconcile so cold a creed
...

Thou burden of all songs the earth hath sung,
Thou retrospect in Time's reverted eyes,
Thou metaphor of everything that dies,
...

Last night the seawind was to me
A metaphor of liberty,
And every wave along the beach
A starlit music seemed to be.
...

A beckoning spirit of gladness seemed afloat,
That lightly danced in laughing air before us:
...

Here, peradventure, in this mirror glassed,
Who gazes long and well at times beholds
Some sunken feature of the mummied Past,
...

Westward a league the city lay, with one
Cloud's imminent umbrage o'er it: when behold,
The incendiary sun
...

Not here, O teeming City, was it meet
Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose,
But where the multitudinous life-tide flows
...