THE TWO SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARIES: of birth, 1864: of death, 1916.
Reading edition
TO SHAKESPEARE
Longer than thine, than thine, Is now my time of life; and thus thy years Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine. O how ignoble this my clasp appears!
Thy unprophetic birth, Thy darkling death: living I might have seen That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth. O first, O last, O infinite between!
Now that my life has shared Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice, To what all-vain embrace shall be compared My lean enclosure of thy paradise?
To ignorant arms that fold A poet to a foolish breast? The Line, That is not, with the world within its hold? So, days with days, my days encompass thine.
Child, Stripling, Man—the sod. Might I talk little language to thee, pore On thy last silence? O thou city of God, My waste lies after thee, and lies before.