The Two Shakespeare Tercentenaries: Of Birth, 1864: Of Death, 1916.

                            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.