O ancient streams, O far-descended woods Full of the fluttering of melodious souls; O hills and valleys that adorn yourselves In solemn jubilation; winds and clouds, Ocean and land in stormy nuptials clasped, And all exuberant creatures that acclaim The Earth's divine renewal: lo, I too With yours would mingle somewhat of glad song. I too have come through wintry terrors--yea, Through tempest and through cataclysm of soul Have come, and am delivered. Me the Spring Me also, dimly with new life hath touched, And with regenerate hope, the salt of life; And I would dedicate these thankful tears To whatsoever Power beneficent, Veiled though his countenance, undivulged his thought, Hath led me from the haunted darkness forth Into the gracious air and vernal morn, And suffers me to know my spirit a note Of this great chorus, one with bird and stream And voiceful mountain,--nay, a string, how jarred And all but broken! of that lyre of life Whereon himself, the master harp-player. Resolving all its mortal dissonance To one immortal and most perfect strain, Harps without pause, building with song the world. But this poem stands alone in the volume as an expression of very interesting personal feeling, the rest being mainly concerned with generalities. Like all Watson's volumes of verse, these _Odes and Other Poems_ contain some excellent literary criticism, conveyed in the neatest and briefest fashion possible. In fact, Watson's verse is only too full of sane and measured criticism--an excellent quality no doubt, but hardly one quite compatible with poetry of a high order. But how fine, how exact, how discriminating, is this piece of criticism, for instance, in verse! Forget not, brother singer! that though Prose Can never be too truthful or too wise, Song is not Truth, not Wisdom, but the rose Upon Truth's lips, the light in Wisdom's eyes. It was in the epigram that Watson first did finished work, and his most typical work is certainly to be found in forms more or less akin to the epigram; in the sonnet, for example. There are so many good sonnets in this volume that choice is difficult; here is one called "Night on Curbar Edge": No echo of man's life pursues my ears; Nothing disputes this Desolation's reign; Change comes not, this dread temple to profane, Where time by aeons reckons, not by years, Its patient form one crag, sole stranded, rears, Type of whate'er is destined to remain While yon still host encamped on night's waste plain Keeps armed watch, a million quivering spears, Hushed are the wild and wing'd lives of the moor; The sleeping sheep nestle 'neath ruined wall, Or unhewn stones in random concourse hurled; Solitude, sleepless, listens at Fate's door; And there is built and 'stablisht over all Tremendous silence, older than the world.