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.