Poet of the Month 055: ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON

ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON 
c 1900

AUBADE

 

 

The lights are out in the street, and a cool wind swings
Loose poplar plumes on the sky;
Deep in the gloom of the garden the first bird sings:
Curt, hurried steps go by
Loud in the hush of the dawn past the linden screen,
Lost in a jar and a rattle of wheels unseen
Beyond on the wide highway: ––
Night lingers dusky and dim in the pear tree boughs,
Hangs in the hollows of leaves, though the thrushes rouse,
And the glimmering lawn glows grey.
Yours, my heart knoweth, yours only, the jewelled gloom,
Splendours of opal and amber, the scent, the bloom,
Yours all, and your own demesne ––
Scent of the dark, of the dawning, of leaves and dew;
Nothing that was but hath changed –– 'tis a world made new ––
A lost world risen again.

 

The lamps are out in the street, and the air grows bright ––
Come –– lest the miracle fade in the broad, bare light,
The new world wither away:
Clear is your voice in my heart, and you call me –– whence?
Come –– for I listen, I wait –– bid me rise, go hence,
Or ever the dawn turn day.

 

 

 

 

Poems 

 

(1912)

 

 

 

 

 

The following biographical information appears on the Penny's Poetry Pages website.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

Rosamund Marriott Watson (October 6, 1860 – December 29, 1911) was an English poet, nature writer, and critic.

 

Watson was born Rosamund Ball (known as Rose), the 5th child of Benjamin Williams Ball, an accountant and amateur poet, and Sylvia Ball (née Good).  Her older brother Wilfrid Ball became a painter of landscapes and marine subjects, and helped introduce her to London's literary circles, including John Lane, the influential publisher of The Yellow Book.

 

Her mother died of cancer when she was just 13, and she would later recall that one consequence of this was that she had an unusual amount of freedom to pursue reading and writing. No records of any formal education for the young Ball have been found.  She initially intended to become a painter but her father forbade it; her aesthetic sensibilities would later shape her writing about gardens and interior design.

 

Watson began her writing career in 1883, with a column on 'modern' fashion for the Fortnightly Review.  She followed this up with other magazine writing, and by 1886 she had gotten her first poems printed in the American periodicals Scribner's Magazine and the New York Independent.

 

These early works were mostly published under one or other of the pseudonyms –– 'Rushworth Armytage' or 'R Armytage' –– which she adopted following her 1879 marriage to George Francis Armytage, a rich Australian.  Their daughter Eulalie was born the following year, but by September 1884 when their second daughter Daphne was born, the couple had parted ways and would later divorce.

 

Around 1886, she eloped with artist Arthur Graham Tomson, shortly afterwards dropping the Armytage pseudonym in favor of using 'Graham R. Tomson.'  During her years with Tomson, they lived in London and often summered in Cornwall.

 

She later divorced Tomson as well and lived with novelist HB Marriott Watson until her death; they never married, although some obituaries referred to her as his wife. They had a son, Richard, who was killed in World War One.

 

Watson's poems were published in various contemporary magazines and journals. Her major volumes of poetry were Tares (1884), The Bird-Bride (1886), A Summer Night (1891), Vespertilia and Other Verses (1895), and After Sunset (1904). Tares, which was published as her first marriage was breaking up and focuses on the disillusionments of love, was issued anonymously. Watson used the Tomson pseudonym for The Bird-Bride and for the first edition of A Summer Night.

 

In working under pseudonyms, Watson was part of a late 19th-century trend among women writers trying to break into male-dominated literary circles. It appears to have helped her, since the influential editor Andrew Lang praised one of her early poems under the belief that it was by a man.  Once Watson established herself in London's literary scene, later editions of A Summer Night carried her real name, as did her subsequent books, including the 1900 novel An Island Rose.

 

Watson wrote prolifically on gardening, and her essays on the subject (together with a few of her poems) were published in The Heart of a Garden (1906).  She also wrote several columns on interior design and fashion, some of which were collected in The Art of the House (1897).

 

Starting in 1892, Watson edited the magazine Sylvia's Journal, a progressive, feminist-leaning women's monthly, which covered a range of topics from work and art to the domestic sphere. Contributors under her tenure included Violet Hunt, Edith Nesbit, and others, and Watson herself wrote a book column titled Book Gossip.

 

In 1892, a long interview with Watson was published in Arnold Bennett's journal Woman.

 

Watson died of cancer at the age of 51.  Her collected poems were published in 1912 with an introduction by HB Marriott Watson. A biography of Watson, entitled Graham R, was published in 2005.

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read another poem by British poet ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON:

 

 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book/Volume_6/The_Golden_Touch

 

 

 

 

 

 

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