He wishes for no happier day than the present one.  Bridges has been called a classical poet because he often selects Greek and Roman subjects for his verse, and because he writes with a formality, purity, and precision of style.  He is, however, most delightful in such volumes as Shorter Poems and New Poems.[3] wherein he describes in a simple, artless manner English rural scenes and fireside joys.  In 1913 he was appointed poet laureate, to succeed Alfred Austin.

John Davidson (1857-1909), a Scotch poet, who came to London and wrestled with poverty, produced much uneven work.  In his best verse, there is often a pleasing combination of poetic beauty and vigorous movement.  Lines like these from his Ballad of a Nun have been much admired:—­

  “On many a mountain’s happy head
  Dawn lightly laid her rosy hand. 
  The adventurous son took heaven by storm,
  Clouds scattered largesses of rain.”

Davidson later became an offensively shrill preacher of materialism and lost his early charm.  Some of the best of his poetry may be found in Fleet Street Ecologues.

Francis Thompson (1860-1907), a Catholic poet, who has been called a nineteenth-century Crashaw, passed much of his short life of suffering in London, where he was once reduced to selling matches on a street corner.  His greatest poem, The Hound of Heaven (1893), is an impassioned lyrical rendering of the passage in the Psalms beginning:  “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” While fleeing down “the long savannahs of the blue,” the poet hears a Voice say:—­

  “Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.”

William Watson (1858- ), a London poet, looked to Milton, Wordsworth, and Arnold as his masters.  Some of Watson’s best verse, such as Wordsworth’s Grave, is written in praise of dead poets.  His early volume Epigrams (1884), containing one hundred poems of four lines each, shows his power of conveying poetic thought in brief space.  One of these poems is called Shelley and Harriet Westbrook:—­

  “A star looked down from heaven and loved a flower,
  Grown in earth’s garden—­loved it for an hour: 
  Let eyes that trace his orbit in the spheres
  Refuse not, to a ruin’d rosebud, tears."[4]

Many expected to see Watson appointed poet-laureate to succeed Tennyson.  Possibly mental trouble, which had temporarily affected him, influenced the choice; for Alfred Austin (1835-1913) received the laureateship in 1896.  Like the Pre-Raphaelites, Watson disliked those whom he called a “phrase-tormenting fantastic chorus of poets.”  His best verse shows depth of poetic thought, directness of expression, and a strong sense of moral values.