Over the earth aglow,
Peak-point and plain below,
The red, round sun sinks in the purple west;
Lambs press their daisy bed,
The lark drops overhead,
And sings the labourer, hastening home to rest.
Bathed in the ruddy light,
Flooding his native height,
A youthful bard is stretched upon the moss;
He heedeth not the eve
Whose locks the elfins weave,
Entranced with Shakespeare near a Cornish Cross.
Men pass him and re-pass;
The hare is in the grass;
The full moon stealeth o’er the hill of pines;
Twilight is lingering dim ;
The village vesper-hymn
Murmurs its music through the trembling vines.
Starts up the musing boy,
His soul is hot with joy,
He revels in a region of delight;
The winds are rich with song,
As slow they sweep along,
And earth and sky are full of holy light.
Tongues trill on every rock,
Notes flow from every block;
The hawthorn shines with fairies; the clear rill
With pointed rushes hid
The pleasant banks amid,
Trickles its treasures tuning down the hill.
A spell is on his soul:
He scans the mystic scroll
Of human passions wakened by the wand
Of England’s noblest seer,
Whom England holds so dear,—
Great, glorious Shakespeare, loved in every land !
He hears the tramp of steeds,
Sees war in gory weeds,
Roams through the forest with delighted eyes;
Bends to the tempest’s roar,
Weeps for the monarch poor,
And sobs with sorrow when dear Juliet dies.
Thus lay that musing boy,
Whose soul was hot with joy,
Environed in a hemisphere of rays;
And in the mystic light
The genius of the height
Brought him a lyre, which he, enraptured, plays.
He sang of him, the great,
Shakespeare, of kingly state,
Who in his boyhood by clear Avon strayed,
Learning the lore of song,
From feeble thing and strong,—
The great tree towering and the tiny blade.
The welkin’s solemn height,
The lightning’s vivid light,
The thunder’s mutter, the black whirlwind’s roar;
The little child at play,
The red-breast on the spray,
The daisy nodding by the ploughman’s door.
The hedges, hung in flowers,
The falling, pattering showers,
The dew-drops, glittering in the morning’s shine;
The smallest film that be,
Which none but poets see,
All taught him lessons with a voice divine.
Dame nature ope’d her store,
Her secret inner door,
Boldly he revelled through her wondrous cell:
And none the song-lines read
Around and overhead,
Or knew the mystic chronicles so well.
He solved the human heart
Like mariner his chart,
And passion’s every phase was known to him;
And when the full time came,
Forth burst the mighty flame,
To blaze and brighten till the stars are dim!
This greatly-gifted one
Was labour’s noblest son,—
The people’s honour, leader, champion strong;
The glory of the soil,
The towering prince of toil,
The matchless monarch in the realm of song.
Loved now the wide world round,
Where human hives are found;
By prince, and peasant following the plough,
The sailor out at sea,
The yeoman on the lea,
The miner digging in the earth below,
The shepherd in his plaid,
The rosy village maid,
The warrior watching by the red camp fire,
The mother with her child,
The satchelled schoolboy mild,
The college student, daily pressing higher.
The dweller of the street,
In the great city’s heat,
The mountaineer, within his lodge of reeds;
The silent solitaire
On the wild desert bare :—
All own his witchery where the daylight speeds.
Three centuries solemn span
Since his great life began,
Have borne their burdens to the hidden sphere;
Each epoch ever found
Him with new glories crowned,
Like the red sun when the wide west is clear.
And so, great bard, to-day
We weave thy natal lay,
And cluster gratefully around thy name;
England will ever be,
Dear Shakespeare, proud of thee,
And coming ages but augment thy fame.
’Tis where the tree-tops wave,
And gleam with glory ’neath the summer’s sun,
And gentle breathings steal among the boughs,
When busy day is done.
“Tis where a tiny rill
Glides through the silence with a trickling fall,
And ivy-leaves, like holy epitaphs,
Are clinging to the wall.
’Tis where the grass is green,
And daisy flowers in snowy beauty lie,
And songs from fragrant field and forest screen
Are sweetly gushing by.
’Tis where the village church
Among the dews its solemn shadow throws,
When silvery lyrics o’er the dingles float,
At evening’s gentle close.
’Tis where the weary rest,
And age and beauty moulder in decay;
And hope upon the silent green sward sits,
Watching the slumbering clay.
Above it shine the stars,
Around it woods and rocky mountains rise:
O, let it be my silent sepulchre,
When death has sealed mine eyes!