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29
SHAKESPEARE
I
Others have pictured thee as mild and bland,And of a cloudless boundless human view;
Of calm regard and of composure grand,
To whom was nothing strange, and nothing new.
Not thus do I conceive thee; but as one
That bitterly exclaimed on human doom,
And as a spirit sad beneath the sun,
And dreading a worse thing beyond the tomb.
Man but “an angry ape” appeared; who fed
With torment laughter of the gods on high;
Lear on the heath, Othello by the bed
Awakened but the mockery of the sky.
And ah! in this dark welter of the soul
No guide art thou and urgest to no goal.
30
II
O true that thou couldst warble pastoral bliss,Of forest and green field and fairy land,
Since to thy boundless reach nought came amiss,
Thou to the nearest task didst set thy hand.
And yet thy deepest hour was vast despair,
And the true mood of thee was dark and fell;
Then heaven with human lightning didst thou bare,
Thy thunder echoed in the pools of hell.
A sunny smiler all with God at rest,
This would they have thee for thy lighter strain.
To me a rebel dost thou stand confest,
With mighty mutiny of heart and brain;
And in no vale of Arden thy renown,
But accusation of the heavens thy crown.
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