C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Father of the Forest
By William Watson (1858–1935)
Girt with thy guard of dotard kings,
What ages hast thou seen retire
Into the dusk of alien things?
What mighty news hath stormed thy shade,
Of armies perished, realms unmade?
And solemn with exceeding eld,
On that proud morn when England’s eyes,
Wet with tempestuous joy, beheld
Round her rough coasts the thundering main
Strewn with the ruined dream of Spain.
The warring faiths, the wavering land,
The sanguine sky’s delirious glow,
And Cranmer’s scorched, uplifted hand.
Wailed not the woods their task of shame,
Doomed to provide the insensate flame?
The sweet queen of a tragic hour—
Crowned with her snow-white memory
The crimson legend of the Tower?
Or when a thousand witcheries lay
Felled with one stroke, at Fotheringay?
And clang of many an armored age,
And well recall’st the famous dead:
Captains or counselors, brave or sage,
Kings that on kings their myriads hurled,
Ladies whose smile embroiled the world.
The soldier, courtier, bard, in one,—
Sidney, that pensive Hesper-light
O’er Chivalry’s departed sun?
Knew’st thou the virtue, sweetness, lore,
Whose nobly hapless name was More?
Belied his madcap youth, and proved
A greatly simple warrior lord
Such as our warrior fathers loved—
Lives he not still? for Shakespeare sings
The last of our adventurer kings.
Glory put by, and sceptred toil.
Round him the carven centuries
Like forest branches arch and coil.
In that dim fane, he is not sure
Who lost or won at Azincour!
That guards Augustine’s rugged throne,
The darling of a knightly Past
Sleeps in his bed of sculptured stone,
And flings, o’er many a warlike tale,
The shadow of his dusky mail.
Graced an august and sapient head,
Rode roughshod to a stained renown
O’er Wallace and Llewellyn dead,
And perished in a hostile land,
With restless heart and ruthless hand;
Fate, like a tempest, early fell,
And the dark secret of whose doom
The Keep of Pomfret kept full well;
Or him that with half-careless words
On Becket drew the dastard swords;
That, starred with idle glory, came
Bearing from leaguered Ascalon
The barren splendor of his fame,
And, vanquished by an unknown bow,
Lies vainly great at Fontevraud;
Made mightier whom he overthrew,—
A man built like a mountain-tower,
A fortress of heroic thew,—
The Conquerer, in our soil who set
This stem of Kinghood flowering yet:
Perhaps thou minglest—who shall say?—
With thrice remoter memories,
And phantoms of the mistier day,
Long ere the tanner’s daughter’s son
From Harold’s hands this realm had won.
The stars look youthful, thou being by;
Youthful the sun’s glad-heartedness;
Witless of time the unaging sky!
And these dim-groping roots around
So deep a human Past are wound,
The tidings scarce would strangely fall
Of fair-haired despots of the sea
Scaling our eastern island-wall,
From their long ships of norland pine,
Their “surf-deer” driven o’er wilds of brine.
That seeks in vain this couch of loam,
I should behold, without amaze,
Camped on yon down the hosts of Rome;
Nor start though English woodlands heard
The selfsame mandatory word
Marshaled the legions long ago,
Or where the lakes are one blue smile
’Neath pageants of Helvetian snow,
Or ’mid the Syrian sands that lie
Sick of the Day’s great tearless eye,
Where, under Asia’s fevering ray,
The long lines of imperial war
O’er Tigris passed, and with dismay
In fanged and iron deserts found
Embattled Persia closing round,
The vultures gathering for a feast,
Till, from the quivers of the sky,
The gorgeous star-flight of the East
Flamed, and the bow of darkness bent
O’er Julian dying in his tent.
With ancient echoes, as I lay?
Was it the antic fantasy
Whose elvish mockeries cheat the day?
Surely a hollow murmur stole
From wizard bough and ghostly bole:
Here in these courts of old repose?
Thy babble is of transient things,
Broils, and the dust of foolish blows.
Thy sounding annals are at best
The witness of a world’s unrest.
And pomps of Time: to me more sweet
The vigils of Eternity,
And Silence patient at my feet;
And dreams beyond the deadening range
And dull monotonies of Change.
With news of cities and of men;
I hear a multitudinous sigh
And lapse into my soul again.
Shall her great noons and sunsets be
Blurred with thine infelicity?
The warmth and lust of life, depart:
Full of mortality, behold
The cavern that was once my heart!
Me, with blind arm, in season due,
Let the aërial woodman hew.
The starry chariot hangs delayed;
His axle is uncooled, nor shall
The thunder of His wheels be stayed.
A changeless pace His coursers keep,
And halt not at the wells of sleep.
The red rose of the dawn shall blow;
The million-lilied stream of night
Wide in ethereal meadows flow;
And autumn mourn, and everything
Dance with the wild pipe of the spring.
And the indifferent heavens above,
Earth shall the ancient tale repeat
Of wars and tears, and death and love,
And wise from all the foolish past,
Shall peradventure hail at last
When nations may as forests grow,
Wherein the oak hates not the pine,
Nor beeches wish the cedars woe,
But all, in their unlikeness, blend
Confederate to one golden end,—
In joy, with pantings, from afar,
Through sound and odor, form and hue,
And mind and clay, and worm and star,—
Now touching goal, now backward hurled,—
Toils the indomitable world.”