Prologue to Arden of Feversham

Love dark as death and fierce as fire on wing     Sustains in sin the soul that feels it cling     Like flame whose tongues are serpents: hope and fear     Die when a love more dire than hate draws near,     And stings to death the heart it cleaves in twain,     And leaves in ashes all but fear and pain.     Our lustrous England rose to life and light     From Rome's and hell's immitigable night,     And music laughed and quickened from her breath,     When first her sons acclaimed Elizabeth.     Her soul became a lyre that all men heard     Who felt their souls give back her lyric word.     Yet now not all at once her perfect power     Spake: man's deep heart abode awhile its hour,     Abode its hour of utterance; not to wake     Till Marlowe's thought in thunderous music spake.     But yet not yet was passion's tragic breath     Thrilled through with sense of instant life and death,     Life actual even as theirs who watched the strife,     Death dark and keen and terrible as life.     Here first was truth in song made perfect: here     Woke first the war of love and hate and fear.     A man too vile for thought's or shame's control     Holds empire on a woman's loftier soul,     And withers it to wickedness: in vain     Shame quickens thought with penitential pain:     In vain dark chance's fitful providence     Withholds the crime, and chills the spirit of sense:     It wakes again in fire that burns away     Repentance, weak as night devoured of day.     Remorse, and ravenous thirst of sin and crime,     Rend and consume the soul in strife sublime,     And passion cries on pity till it hear     And tremble as with love that casts out fear.     Dark as the deed and doom he gave to fame     For ever lies the sovereign singer's name.     Sovereign and regent on the soul he lives     While thought gives thanks for aught remembrance gives,     And mystery sees the imperial shadow stand     By Marlowe's side alone at Shakespeare's hand.