Classic Poem

The sages tell us genius is the fruit
Of centuries. One child alone came forth
From Scio's golden cycles. With blind eyes
Turned from without, he tracked the world of thought,
Counted its fabulous shapes, and gave to men
That beautiful religion which has made
Classic and consecrate each Tuscan flower,
Each Greek and Roman stream.

One prince alone,
Prophet and seer, sprang from the lusty womb
Of Europe's last millennium. With bright eyes
Gleaming like opals, from each bog and fen
Goblin and witch he summoned; from the air
Fantastic sprites; and from the human heart
Its hidden skeletons, its demons fierce,
Or, with a seraph's high authority,
Its godlike virtues and its graces fair.
Swift as the lightning, over land and sea
His subtle witchery sped. The little child
Looking for buttercups, the grandam gray
Mending her winter fire, the cow-boy blithe
Babbled his wit, not knowing whence it came;
And they whose polished, sensitive ear had caught
The magic of his verse, sought far and wide
In eager hope that from the lifeless page
Some spirit weird as his might call to life
The wondrous shapes he pictured.

Hope had died
Or dwindled to the meagre stunted thought
That the grand visions of the English seer
Were but ideal children, when at length
From Avon's Jupiter, armed cap-a-pie ,
Thou, goddess-queen, didst spring.

We see thee tread
Macbeth's still midnight chamber, and the shapes
That haunt our own deep hearts start up, and point
Malignant fingers at us. 'Tis not thou
We gaze at till our spirits shake with fear,
But dark Alecto, born anew of blood.
Scene after scene beneath thy magic wand
The Stratford wizard's peopled world unfolds.
We laugh with Rosalind; we descant with Jacques;
Bright Portia's wit and wisdom play at will
Before our senses; gallanThenry woos
Fair Katharine and most fair; Ophelia comes
Bedight with rue and pansies; white-haired Lear
Distracted sobs, Cordelia, stay a little!
And Juliet sings Ten thousand times good-night .

We look again, as o'er the enchanted stage
Thy proud cothurnus treads. We see the calm
And stately child of Ferdinand, whose firm
Castilian courage awes our ready tears
Back to congealment. Breathlessly we note
The queenly, sad appeal; the haughty tone;
The lofty bearing, the majestic woe;
Till, at the last, we start to find us here,
Dwellers in modern time, and from the leash
Our fettered pulses freeing, while the blood
Leaps through each trembling artery, we feel
That life's Erinnys dire in thee become
Eumenides indeed.

Others have trod
The Shakespeare world before thee. Some have wept
Like Juliet and Ophelia; some have died
Like Katharine, some have plotted like Macbeth,
Or jested like gay Rosalind in the wood;
But thou alone hast conjured, with thy spell,
All the enchanter's fancies into shape
And made them speak at will, from grave to gay
From lively to severe.

We are most proud
To say thou art American, but this
Is meagre claim for thee. Unto no land
Nor line dost thou belong; thou shin'st eterne
In the fair parthenon of mimetic lore,
Pallas-Athena, helmeted and throned.