THE MODERN RHYMER
I
Now you who rhyme, and I who rhyme,
Have not we sworn it, many a time,
That we no more our verse would scrawl,
For Shakespeare he had sung it all!
And yet, whatever others see,
The earth is fresh to you and me;
And birds that sing, and winds that blow,
And blooms that make the country glow,
And lusty swains, and maidens bright,
And clouds by day, and stars by night,
And all the pictures in the skies
That moved before Will Shakespeare's eyes;
Love, hate, and scorn; frost, fire, and flower;
On us as well as him have power.
Go to! our spirits shall not be laid,
Silenced and smothered by a shade.
Avon is not the only stream
Can make a poet sing and dream;
Nor are those castles, queens, and kings
The hight of sublunary things.
II
Beneath the false moon's pallid glare,
By the cool fountain in the square
(This gray-green dusty square they set
Where two gigantic highways met)
We hear a music rare and new,
Sweet Shakespeare was not known to you!
You saw the New World's sun arise;
High up it shines in our own skies.
You saw the ocean from the shore;
Through mid-seas now our ship doth roar—
A wild, new, teeming world of men
That wakens in the poet's brain
Thoughts, that were never thought before,
Of hope, and longing, and despair,
Wherein man's never-resting race
Westward, still westward, on doth fare,
Doth still subdue, and still aspire,
Or turning on itself doth face
Its own indomitable fire;—
O million-centuried thoughts that make
The Past seem but a shallop's wake!
