Poem by William Watson

To a Friend

CHAFING AT ENFORCED IDLENESS 
FROM INTERRUPTED HEALTH

Soon may the edict lapse, that on you lays
This dire compulsion of infertile days,
This hardest penal toil, reluctant rest!
Meanwhile I count you eminently blest,
Happy from labours heretofore well done,
Happy in tasks auspiciously begun.
For they are blest that have not much to rue—
That have not oft mis-heard the prompter's cue,
Stammered and stumbled and the wrong parts played,
And life a Tragedy of Errors made.

1. Well He Slumbers, Greatly Slain
2. On Exaggerated Deference to Foreign Literary Opinion
3. And These - Are These Indeed the End
4. World-Strangeness
5. The Key-Board

Caroline Fry (Wilson) To a Friend ("Behold you the beam")

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