CHARLES DICKENS
Read by Mr. Watson in New York, at the celebration of the Dickens
Centenary, 1912. Reprinted from the public press.
BY WILLIAM WATSON
When Nature first designed
In her all-procreant mind
The man whom here tonight we are met to honor—
When first the idea of Dickens flashed upon her—
"Where, where" she said, "upon my populous earth
Shall this prodigious child be brought to birth?
Where shall we have his earliest wondering look
Into my magic book?
Shall he be born where life runs like a brook,
Pleasant and placid as of old it ran,
Far from the sound and shock of mighty deeds,
Among soft English meads?
Or shall he first my pictured volume scan
Where London lifts its hot and fevered brow
For cooling night to fan?"
"Nay, nay," she said, "I have a happier plan
For where at Portsmouth, on the embattled tides
The ships of war step out with thundering prow
And shake their stormy sides—
In yonder place of arms, whose gaunt sea wall
Flings to the clouds the far-heard bugle call—
He shall be born amid the drums and guns,
He shall be born among my fighting sons,
Perhaps the greatest warrior of them all."
II
So there, where from the forts and battle gear
And all the proud sea babbles Nelson's name,
Into the world this later hero came—
He, too, a man that knew all moods but fear—
He, too, a fighter. Yet not his the strife
That leaves dark scars on the fair face of life.
He did not fight to rend the world apart;
He fought to make it one in mind and heart,
Building a broad and noble bridge to span
The icy chasm that sunders man from man.
Wherever wrong had fixed its bastions deep,
There did his fierce yet gay assault surprise
Some fortress girt with lucre or with lies;
There his light battery stormed some ponderous keep;
There charged he up the steep,
A knight on whom no palsying torpor fell,
Keen to the last to break a lance with Hell.
And still undimmed his conquering weapons shine;
On his bright sword no spot of rust appears,
And still across the years
His soul goes forth to battle, and in the face
Of whatso'er is false, or cruel, or base,
He hurls his gage and leaps among the spears,
Being armed with pity and love and scorn divine,
Immortal laughter and immortal tears.