 | Wood-notes and Church-bells |  |
275
DOVER CLIFF.
SHAKSPERE'S TERCENTENARY, 1864.
Up Shakspere's Cliff I climbed, and felt the groundHalf sacred. That white bulwark of our land
Seemed Nature's monument to her Poet grand;
His name the murmuring surge seemed to resound—
His mighty genius lingered all around.
On that chalk cliff Shakspere once took his stand
And while the breeze his brow capacious fanned,
Looked down o'er that same sea to the sky's bound.
When to the grassy summit I had mounted,
A yellow cowslip crimson-dropt I found,
Marked with the same five spots Shakspere once counted:
Then thought I, as o'er Cliff and flower I linger,
All Nature for his head a garland wound,
Who touched things great or small with Truth's own finger.
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