heart the brand of her disdain, The eyes that wept when little Hamnet died, The lips that learned from Marlowe's and again Taught riper lore to Fletcher and the rest, The presence and demeanor sovereign At last at Stratford calm and manifest, That rested on the seventh day and scanned His work and knew it good, and left the quest And like his own enchanter broke his wand. 

 No viewless mind! The very shape, no less, He used to speak and smile with, move and stand! God is most God not in his loneliness, Unfellowed, discreationed, unrevealed, Nor thundering on Sinai, pitiless, Nor when the seven vials are unsealed, But when his spirit companions with our thought And in his fellowship our pain is healed; And we are likest God when we are brought Most near to all men. Bring us near to him, The gentle, human soul whose calm might wrought Imperious Lear and made our eyes grow dim For Imogen,--who, though he heard the spheres "Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubim," Could laugh with Falstaff and his loose compeers And love the rascal with the same big heart That o'er Cordelia could not stay its tears. 

 For still the man is greater than his art. And though thy men and women, Shakespeare, rise Like giants in our fancy and depart, Thyself art more than all their masteries, Thy wisdom more than Hamlet's questionings Or the cold searching of Ulysses' eyes, Thy mirth more sweet than Benedick's flouts and flings, Thy smiling dearer than Mercutio's, Thy dignity past that of all thy kings, And thy enchantment more than Prospero's. 

  For thou couldst not have had Othello's flaw, Not erred with Brutus,--greater, then, than those For all their nobleness. Oh, albeit with awe, Leave we the mighty phantoms and draw near The man that fashioned them and gave them law! The Master Poet found with scarce a peer In all the ages his domain to share, Yet of all singers gentlest and most dear! Oh, how shall words thy proper praise declare, Divine in thy supreme humanity And near as the inevitable air? 

 So he that wrought this image deemed of thee; So I, thy lover, keep thee in my heart; So may this figure set for men to see Where the world passes eager for the mart, Be as a sudden insight of the soul That makes a darkness into order start, And lift thee up for all men, fair and whole, Till scholar, merchant farmer, artisan, Seeing, divine beneath the aureole The fellow heart and know thee for a man. 

AT THE ROAD-HOUSE: IN MEMORY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

 You hearken, fellows? Turned aside 

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