Living

Vanishings

by William Watson 1858–1935

From The Poems of William Watson (1893)

Living

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.

MLA

Watson, William. “Vanishings.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/watson/140/.

Chicago

Watson, William. “Vanishings.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/watson/140/.

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