God may emerge at last.

This one, despite its subject, is far above doggerel:

His friends he loved. His direst earthly foes--
Cats--believe he did but feign to hate.
My hand will miss the insinuated nose,
Mine eyes the tail that wagg'd contempt at fate.

But his best epigrams are on purely literary themes:

Your Marlowe's page I close, my Shakespeare's ope.
How welcome--after gong and cymbal's din--
The continuity, the long slow slope
And vast curves of the gradual violin!

With the publication in 1890 of his masterpiece, _Wordsworth's
Grave_, William Watson came into his own. This is worthy of the man
it honours, and what higher praise could be given? It is superior,
both in penetration and in beauty, to Matthew Arnold's famous
_Memorial Verses_. Indeed, in the art of writing subtle literary
criticism in rhythmical language that is itself high and pure poetry,
Mr. Watson is unapproachable by any of his contemporaries, and I do
not know of any poet in English literature who has surpassed him. This
is his specialty, this is his clearest title to permanent fame. And
although his criticism is so valuable, when employed on a sympathetic
theme, that he must be ranked among our modern interpreters of
literature, his style in expressing it could not possibly be
translated into prose, sure test of its poetical greatness. In his
_Apologia_, he says