Poem by William Watson

Vanishings

As one whose eyes have watched the stricken day
Swoon to its crimson death adown the sea,
Turning his face to eastward suddenly
Sees a lack-lustre world all chill and gray,—
Then, wandering sunless whitherso he may,
Feels the first dubious dumb obscurity,
And vague foregloomings of the Dark to be,
Close like a sadness round his glimmering way;
So I, from drifting dreambound on and on
About strange isles of utter bliss, in seas
Whose waves are unimagined melodies,
Rose and beheld the dreamless world anew:
Sad were the fields, and dim with splendours gone
The strait sky-glimpses fugitive and few.

1. On Landor's “Hellenics”
2. Mensis Lacrimarum
3. The Glimpse
4. Nay, Bid Me Not My Cares to Leave
5. In Laleham Churchyard

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