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SUGGESTED BY SHAKESPEARE'S SEVENTY-FIRST SONNET
Who mourned for the great poet when he died
And left the universe without his peer?
Not England, heedless of her greatest pride,
Nor he whom most he loved and praised, I fear.
His fellows, his relations, and a friend,
Or two perchance, his coffin gathered round,
But no high-stationed patron saw the end,
Or sent a token of his grief profound.
And left the universe without his peer?
Not England, heedless of her greatest pride,
Nor he whom most he loved and praised, I fear.
His fellows, his relations, and a friend,
Or two perchance, his coffin gathered round,
But no high-stationed patron saw the end,
Or sent a token of his grief profound.
He, destined to preserve his country's name
When an its other glories are forgot,
Here begs, in deep humility and shame,
To be, even by his friend, remembered not:
But while that friend compounded is with day,
All Time is now our poet's endless day.
When an its other glories are forgot,
Here begs, in deep humility and shame,
To be, even by his friend, remembered not:
But while that friend compounded is with day,
All Time is now our poet's endless day.
SHELLEY
Noblest and bravest of the sons of song!
Most selfless and most single-hearted friend
Of the unfriended sufferers of wrong:
Too eager for his peace the world to mend:
Alas! he knew not men, how hard of heart,
How dim of apprehension, slow to move,
How vain it was to think he could impart
To them his zeal for truth, his boundless love!
His life was but a brief and fevered dream,
But such a dream as he alone could know:
And wisdom at the end began to stream
Upon him with a mild and steady glow:
Alas! that death should then his victim claim,
Even in that hour when he himself became!
Most selfless and most single-hearted friend
Of the unfriended sufferers of wrong:
Too eager for his peace the world to mend:
Alas! he knew not men, how hard of heart,
How dim of apprehension, slow to move,
How vain it was to think he could impart
To them his zeal for truth, his boundless love!
His life was but a brief and fevered dream,
But such a dream as he alone could know:
And wisdom at the end began to stream
Upon him with a mild and steady glow:
Alas! that death should then his victim claim,
Even in that hour when he himself became!
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