University of Virginia Library

With Europe victor o'er the braggart Czar,
With wars and rumours echoing from afar,
Our happy England, long intent on peace,
Improves the arts she won from Rome and Greece.
There, in old time the drama held high state—
And here to-night claims audience not less great.
The Muse's temple to our hopes restored,
Freshly adorned, doth entrance new afford,
Re-opes its gates, and cheerful welcome gives
To all who joy to know—the drama lives:
A race as fair as free, as brave as good,
Derived from Heaven's best house, of earth's best blood,
Whose minds by Shakspere nursed, by Milton taught,
Know well to weigh the worth of wit and thought.
To you, who speak the language that they wrote,
We shew their works, with some of later note,
And thus, appealing to your better taste,
Ask that no more the stage may be disgraced
By vulgar themes that souls refined detest,
And seek your favour only for the best.
Thus would we still the art of acting raise,
And challenge only where we merit praise.
If you approve, and recompense our aim,
We'll win for theatres their ancient name;
But if our efforts no response receive,
Not ours the fault, if “the judicious grieve.”
With comic grace, or tragic force, be ours
The task to please and move the spirit's powers;
To you the laughter and the tears pertain,
That prove our task has not been plied in vain.
While proud Pauline, or Julia errs to mend,
And the true wife finds in her lord her friend;
While for her sire the daughter all resigns,
Or Arden's forest bears Orlando's lines,
Or Love, in Knowles' fair countess, stoops to rise,
Or Otway's heroine maddens ere she dies,
Or Scotland's thane ambition's promptings sway,
Or Portia walks in duty's safer way,
Or Imogen rests in her husband's truth,
Or Juliet perishes in passion's youth,
Or Ion sacrifices life and love,
That he from Argos may the curse remove:
While scenes like these, by masters painted well,
Pass, pageant-like, each with its mighty spell—
Resist not you the charm, because too strong,
Nor pine for dalliance with an idler song,
But mindful still of Britain's bardic fame,
Let your hearts kindle with the muses' flame,
Whence, purified or cheered by either mood,
By melancholy or by mirth subdued,
Attending “thoughts that breathe and words that burn;”
When falls the curtain, and you home return,
Then may reflection show that this our stage,
If wisely used, tends to reform the age,
Softens the heart and elevates the mind,
Chastens the stubborn, makes the kind more kind,
The virtuous still more virtuous, fair more fair,
Imbuing still the common with the rare,
Till all, with the poetic spirit rife,
Exhibit beauty in their daily life.

To-night a theme, well prized in days of yore
By bard and statesman, skilled in elfin lore,
From the choice legends of our native land,
Treasures pathetic, terrible and grand,
We have evoked—and lo, it now appears,
Awaked from the long sleep of buried years—
A “Briton moniment”—whose student reads
Our soil the faërie's own—our heroes' deeds
Those of the mighty, dauntless in their will;
“Argument worthy of Mæonian quill”—
So call'd by Spenser; and by Milton told,
That poets by their art might more unfold
In after-times, and grace these stories rude
With fancies rich, out of their gratitude.
So Shakspere thought; and, lo, upon the stage
Paternal Lear, the monarch-type of age,
Uprose sublime, and won the tragic crown
From Greek and Roman brows, to deck his poet's own.
By his example fired, and with like spells,
We too requicken from dead chronicles
A tale of wonder and of terror—such
As may even yet those deeper feelings touch
By which we recognise such truths as aim
At all we must believe and cannot name—
But which, once smitten, link the earth and sky
In one full song, one solemn symphony,
And shew each heart it may no secret hide
From him whose soul the muse has deified.