The Poems of Mackenzie Bell

“He was not of an age, but for all time!”
Never was nobler poet-tribute paid
Than this of stalwart Jonson to his friend—
To him whose deathless crown of love is wov'n
By Nature's royal hand of Nature's flowers.
As Shakespeare left this earth his Prospero's wand
Waved over England; lo! it hath transformed her!
Two thousand years of ever-changing life
Wrought less of change in her than fifteen score
Since face to face men met the bard in London.

All, all is changed!
Save love and joy and laughter, ay, and pain
And hope and sin and sorrow, yet he speaks

With clarion voice as ever, witnessing
For truth and right, for tenderness and faith.
Not with the arid tones of some harsh preacher
Who scolds the while he teaches, but with art
Which pictures right, which pictures sin and shame,
And points to truth.

Here haggard Shylock stands
To show the cruel wrong that racial hate
Alike brings to the oppressors and oppressed.

Cordelia now approaches, tender-eyed,
Meek, with kind pity for her father, Lear,
A king no longer.

Radiant Juliet comes,
Her Romeo has tranced her eye, and lo
Her being all is changed. For Love is here—
Sweet, early Love that makes a girl a woman,
And makes a youth a man. Sorrow and pain,
Alas! are later. But their present bliss
Is all-sufficing to the twain, and they
Know heaven when clasped in one another's arms.

Macbeth and his too zealous wife appear,
And pass before our eyes plotting foul crimes.

The “banished Duke” and kindly Jacques reveal
The greatest of the boons that Life may give
Is love of Nature and simplicity.

Gay Benedick and mirthful Beatrice
Make “Much Ado,” and linger, laughter-laden.

Bold Katherina yields herself at last
As conquerered in “The Taming of the Shrew.”
But not till she has railed and railed again
At brave Petruchio.

See Hamlet pass,
Profoundest personage in all the host
That Shakespeare makes to live, a lofty soul,
The study and the marvel of the world.

March 8th, 1907.

II.—SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON.

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(Composed for the Shakespeare Reading Society's Commemoration, 1907, and recited by Mr. Alexander Watson.)

Who comes, a man in mind, a boy in age,—
Hope's golden music ringing in his ears,
To conquer London single-handed—wage
Battle with Chance—battle with strong compeers?
And now, who leaves the conflict—victory won—
Who bids farewell to London's glorious strife,
To brood by Avon-lilies that have shone
Bright in his brain through all that stress of life?
As homeward wending towards the little town
He left—how brief the time!—without a name,
What are his visions? Does he see the crown
With which the world shall crown him? Does the fame
Of Shakespeare reach him? Does the skylark sing
“Behold our Will come back—the poet-king!”?

III.—SHAKESPEARE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

Shakespeare, thy legacy of peerless song
Reveals mankind in every age and place,
In every joy, in every grief and wrong:
'Tis England's legacy to all our race.
Little we know of all thine inner life—
Little of all thy swift, thy wondrous years—
Years filled with toil—rich years whose days were rife
With strains that bring us mirth, that bring us tears.
Little we know, and yet this much we know,
Sense was thy guiding star—sense guided thee
To live in this thy Stratford long ago—
To live content in calm simplicity;
Greatest of those who wrought with soul aflame
At honest daily work—then found it fame.

IV.—PROLOGUE AND INTERSPERSED LINES

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To a performance of Episodes from the Plays of Shakespeare, illustrative of London life. Given in the Gardens of Lowther Lodge, South Kensington, on June 21 and 22, 1907, by the Members of the Shakespeare Reading Society, in aid of the Funds of the South Kensington District Branch of the League

of Mercy. The poem was spoken throughout in the first instance by Mr. Otto Sallmann, and subsequently the eight detached portions were delivered by eight chosen narrators, one from each group of players.

Leagued in the angel Mercy's “twice-blessed” cause,
We bring these scenes before you. Your applause
We take not to ourselves, 'tis meant for him—
London's chief bard whose glory grows not dim—
Shakespeare, whom Coleridge called “the thousand-souled.”
'Tis our delight to-day that we unfold
Some treasures;—freaks of fancy, genius-fraught;
Glimpses of wit and pathos he had caught
When dreaming in the London of the past,
Where gabled fronts of oak long shadows cast,
Where rapiers rattled, and where, far and nigh,
The varied garb gave pleasure to the eye.
To him each showed an inmost self; and there
Perchance the Muse first found him, unaware.

Now is presented sad Queen Katherine's trial,
Her piteous suit to Henry, and denial;—
A tale of woman's sorrow long ago,
A tale of mingled guile, deceit, and woe.

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[Here was performed “Henry VIII.,” Act 2, Scene 4 (The Trial of Queen Katharine).]

Then comes from bright Messina, far away,
Sage Dogberry. And, have we not to-day

Some of his tribe still with us? Night by night
Do they not guard us—make our slumbers light?

[_]

[Here was performed “Much Ado About Nothing,” Act 3, Scene 3 (The Watch Scene).]

And soon shall you behold the fall of pride
As shown by stately Wolsey, placed beside
Anne Boleyn's coronation. There 'tis plain
How fickle is kingly favour and disdain.

[_]

[Here was performed “Henry VIII.,” Act 3, Scene 3 (the dialogue between Wolsey and Cromwell), followed by Scene 4 (the Coronation Procession of Anne Boleyn).]

Later, you will perceive the measured pace
And beauty of the gay Pavane, each grace
And gesture setting forth the melody
And joy of happy motion, full and free.
And then in troop the sprightly Morris throng,
Their dance a fitting close to rustic song.

[_]

[Here was given a Pavane, followed by a Morris Dance.]

In the fair Temple Gardens glow the roses,
Both white and red, whose plucking soon discloses
Fierce cause of deadly feud, for which, alas!
Ere many summer joyous days shall pass,
Many of England's bravest sons must bleed
In direful civic strife, whose root was greed

Of power: “In our dear England's day of need”
(Hear this their voiceless cry) “'twere sweet indeed
Against her foemen to defend her cause,
Or die for her—to uphold her righteous laws.
But thus, 'tis ill to die, merely that one
Or other despot find his ill work done.”

[_]

[Here was performed “Henry V.,” Act 1, Scene 4, (the Plucking of the Roses in the Temple Gardens).]

See! Gloster here—Gloster with fawning tongue
Envenomed, snake-like, deadly; for among
Those near him is the youthful prince whose life
He seeks; with hatred all his soul is rife.

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[Here was performed “Richard III.,” Act 3, Scene 1 (the Meeting of Edward V. and the Duke of Gloster).]

And look, you now shall see that bold, old lover
Falstaff, with ardour cooled, abashed discover
Himself befooled when he essays to wage
Victorious war with “merry” Mistress Page.

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[Here was performed “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Act 3, Scene 3 (the Buck-Basket Scene).]

Great Shakespeare now approaches; he will read
One of his “sugred” sonnets; you will heed
The matchless lofty music, rich and strong,

The cadence of his pure, immortal song,
Full of rare tact towards proud Elizabeth,
Her name, by him enshrined, shall know no death.

Leagued in the angel Mercy's “twice-blessed” cause,
These scenes we bring before you. Your applause
We take not to ourselves, 'tis meant for him—
London's chief bard whose glory grows not dim.

[_]

[At the close of the Episodes was given a representation of Shakespeare and his Fellows being received by Queen Elizabeth and her Court, subsequent to a performance of “The Comedy of Errors.” Shakespeare read his celebrated sonnet beginning: “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments,” in praise of the Queen.]

University of Virginia Library

POEMS AND SONNETS CONCERNING SHAKESPEARE.

I.—IN PRAISE OF SHAKESPEARE.

II.—SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON.

III.—SHAKESPEARE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

IV.—PROLOGUE AND INTERSPERSED LINES