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Your plaudits are to us and to our art
As is the life-blood to the human heart:
And every power that bids the leaf be green,
In Nature acts on this her mimic scene.
Our sunbeams are the sparklings of glad eyes,
Our winds the whisper of applause, that flies
From lip to lip, the heart-born laugh of glee,
And sounds of cordial hands that ring out merrily,
And heaven’s own dew falls on us in the tear
That woman weeps o’er sorrows pictured here,
When crowded feelings have no words to tell
The might, the magic of the actor’s spell.

These have been ours; and do we hope in vain
Here, oft and deep, to feel them ours again?
No! while the weary heart can find repose
From its own pains in fiction’s joys or woes;
While there are open lips and dimpled cheeks,
When music breathes, or wit or humor speaks;
While Shakespeare’s master-spirit can call up
Noblest and worthiest thoughts, and brim the cup
Of life with bubbles bright as happiness,
Cheating the willing bosom into bliss;
So long will those who, in their spring of youth,
Have listened to the Drama’s voice of truth,
Marked in her scenes the manners of their age,
And gathered knowledge for a wider stage,
Come here to speed with smiles life’s summer years,
And melt its winter snow with pleasant tears;