I do not say that the poet is without his measure of feeling; but it is rather the pensive feeling of a Jaques, the dainty interest of a Matthew Arnold, than any surge of emotion. The poet seems to me to encourage his brain to feel--to give it that passing luxury with a certain amount of deliberation. The _Hymn to the Sea_ is the only real poem written in the English language in hexameters and pentameters. There have been many attempts at these metres, but they have been failures, one and all. And nothing shows Mr. Watson's skill, nay genius, more than the fact that his attempt is a great and conspicuous success. The sea, confined within its shores, never resting, yet never able to pass its bounds, at war with the winds, and serving the moon with its tides, is compared to man, with his unrest, his limitations, his aspirations. As before, when the clue is once given, the thread is easily followed to the end. The result is simply an intellectual operation done into verbal music. Yet who but William Watson, having to speak of the moon as mistress of the sea, could express his fancy in words like these:-- When, as yonder, thy mistress, at height of her mutable glories, Wise from the magical East, comes like a sorceress pale. Ah, she comes, she arises--impassive, emotionless, bloodless, Wasted and ashen of cheek, zoning her ruins with pearl. Once she was warm, she was joyous, desire in her pulses abounding: Surely thou lovedst her well, then, in her conquering youth! Surely not all unimpassioned, at sound of thy rough serenading, She from the balconied night unto her melodist leaned,-- Leaned unto thee, her bondsman, who keepest to-day her commandments, All for the sake of old love, dead at thy heart though it lie. 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.