Shakespeare

(Stratford-on-Avon)

THOU

CHOU soft-flowing Avon, by thy silver stream Of things more than mortal sweet Shakespeare would dream,

The fairies by moonlight dance round his green bed, For hallowed the turf is which pillowed his head.

The love-stricken maiden, the soft-sighing swain, Here rove without danger, and sigh without pain; The sweet bud of beauty no blight here shall dread, For hallowed the turf is which pillowed his head.

Here youth shall be famed for their love and their truth,

And cheerful old age feel the spirit of youth;

For the raptures of fancy here poets shall tread, For hallowed the turf is that pillowed his head.

Flow on, silver Avon, in song ever flow!

Be the swans on thy borders still whiter than snow!

Ever full be thy stream, like his fame may it spread!

And the turf ever hallowed which pillowed his

head.

David Garrick.

An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare

(Stratford-on-Avon)

WHAT needs my Shakespeare for his honored

bones,

The Labor of an age in pilèd stones?

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-y pointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepúlcher'd in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
John Milton.

Guilielmus Rex

(Stratford-on-Avon)

HE folk who lived in Shakespeare's day
And saw that gentle figure pass

By London Bridge, his frequent way-
They little knew what man he was.

The pointed beard, the courteous mien,
The equal port to high and low,
All this they saw or might have seen
But not the light behind the brow.

The doublet's modest gray or brown,
The slender sword-hilt's plain device,
What sign had these for prince or clown?
Few turned or none to scan him twice.

Yet 'twas the king of England's kings!
The rest with all their pomp and trains
Are mouldered, half-remembered things
'Tis he alone that lives and reigns.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Within King's College Chapel, Cambridge

(Cambridge)

TAX

AX not the royal saint with vain expense, With ill-match'd aims the Architect who plann'd

(Albeit laboring for a scanty band

Of white-robed Scholars only) this immense
And glorious work of fine intelligence!

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more:

So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof

Self-poised, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells Where light and shade repose, where music dwells

Lingering and wandering on as loath to die; Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof

That they were born for immortality.

William Wordsworth.

Canute

(Ely)

A

PLEASANT music floats along the mere, From monks in Ely chanting service high, While as Canute the king is rowing by.

"My oarsmen," quoth the mighty king, "draw

near,

That we the sweet song of the monks may hear."
He listens (all past conquests and all schemes
Of future vanishing like empty dreams),
Heart-touched and haply not without a tear.
The royal minstrel ere the choir is still,
While his free barge skims the smooth flood
along,

Gives to that rapture an accordant rhyme.

O suffering Earth! be thankful; sternest clime And rudest age are subject to the thrill

Of heaven-descended piety and song.

William Wordsworth.

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard

(Stoke Pogis)

HE curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

THE

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: