p. 16

A voice peals in this end of night A phrase of notes resembling stars, Single and spiritual notes of light. What call they at my window-bars? The South, the past, the day to be, An ancient infelicity.

Darkling, deliberate, what sings This wonderful one, alone, at peace? What wilder things than song, what things Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece, Dearer than Italy, untold Delight, and freshness centuries old?

And first first-loves, a multitude, The exaltation of their pain; Ancestral childhood long renewed; And midnights of invisible rain; And gardens, gardens, night and day, Gardens and childhood all the way.

What Middle Ages passionate, O passionless voice! What distant bells Lodged in the hills, what palace state Illyrian! For it speaks, it tells, Without desire, without dismay, Some morrow and some yesterday.

p. 17All-natural things! But more—Whence came This yet remoter mystery? How do these starry notes proclaim A graver still divinity? This hope, this sanctity of fear? O innocent throat! O human ear!

p. 17

p. 18THE TWO SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARIES: of birth, 1864: of death, 1916.

p. 18

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?

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