Surely such verse would have a claim to endurance, even if the thought were less of a thought than it is.
Autumn, again, is a short piece upon the suggestions of that season. What would those suggestions naturally be? Obviously, the passing and perishing of all things that are. True; but to express those suggestions, obvious as they are, as Watson expresses them, requires a rhetorical power and a taste in melodious words such as would make their possessor eminent in the judgment of men who care anything for beauty. There may be no particular depth in the work; it may be less passionate, less full of thought, than the Ode to the West Wind, but we could ill afford to spare such combinations of sound as—
Elusive notes in wandering wafture borne
From undiscoverable lips, that blow
An immaterial horn.
In Liberty Rejected we meet once more with the similitude of the moon and the tide. Mr. Watson's range of purely intellectual imagination is, like that of his emotion, limited. But we do not mind meeting the comparison again, when the lover who refuses to be free expresses himself thus—
The ocean would as soon
Entreat the moon
Unsay the magic verse
That seals him hers
From silver noon to noon.
When he touches upon nature, we feel again that Watson is not "letting himself go." When he escapes from town it is not to revel and to make us revel in the sheer delight of rural sights and sounds. He feels as before, with the eye and the understanding, not with the buoyant blood of the full heart. No matter, he feels enough to give us this quatrain—
In stainless daylight saw the pure seas roll;
Saw mountains pillaring the perfect sky:
Then journeyed home to carry in his soul
The torment of the difference till he die.
Why should I go on to quote such lines as—
That thousand-memoried unimpulsive sea,
or,