ON EXAGGERATED DEFERENCE TO

By William Watson

What! and shall we, with such submissive airs

As age demands in reverence from the young,

Await these crumbs of praise from Europe flung,

And doubt of our own greatness till it bears

The signet of your Goethes or Voltaires?

We who alone in latter times have sung

With scarce less power than Arno's exiled tongue —

We who are Milton's kindred, Shakespeare's heirs.

The prize of lyric victory who shall gain

If ours be not the laurel, ours the palm?

More than the froth and flotsam of the Seine,

More than your Hugo-flare against the night,

And more than Weimar's proud elaborate calm,

One flash of Byron's lightning, Wordsworth's light.