Poem by Alice Meynell

The Two Shakespeare Tercentenaries

     OF BIRTH, 1864; OF DEATH, 1916

               TO SHAKESPEARE

            Longer than thine, than thine,
Is now my time of life; and thus thy years
Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine.
O how ignoble this my clasp appears!

            Thy unprophetic birth,
Thy darkling death; living I might have seen
That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth.
O first, O last, O infinite between!

            Now that my life has shared
Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice,
To what all-vain embrace shall be compared
My lean enclosure of thy paradise:

            To ignorant arms that fold
A poet to a foolish breast? The Line,
That is not, with the world within its hold?
So, days with days, my days encompass thine.

            Child, Stripling, Man—the sod.
Might I talk little language to thee, pore
On thy last silence? O thou city of God,
My waste lies after thee, and lies before.

1. The Spring to the Summer
2. The Launch
3. The Joyous Wanderer
4. The Two Questions
5. The Newer Vainglory

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