The just, the wise, the brave,
Attend thee to the grave.

And you, the soldiers of our wars, Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars, Salute him once again,

Your late commander-slain!

Yes, let your tears indignant fall,
But leave your muskets on the wall;
Your country needs you now
Beside the forge-the plough.

(When Justice shall unsheathe her brand, If Mercy may not stay her hand, Nor would we have it so,

She must direct the blow.)

And you, amid the master-race,
Who seem so strangely out of place,
Know ye who cometh? He
Who hath declared ye free.

Bow while the body passes—nay,
Fall on your knees, and weep, and pray!
Weep, weep-I would ye might-
Your poor black faces white!

And, children, you must come in bands, With garlands in your little hands,

Of blue and white and red,

To strew before the dead.

So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes
The Fallen to his last repose.

Beneath no mighty dome,
But in his modest home;

The churchyard where his children rest,
The quiet spot that suits him best,

There shall his grave be made,
And there his bones be laid.

And there his countrymen shall come,
With memory proud, with pity dumb,
And strangers far and near,
For many and many a year.

For many a year and many an age,
While History on her ample page
The virtues shall enroll

On that Paternal Soul.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

APRIL 23, 1564.

SHE sat in her eternal house,

The sovereign mother of mankind;
Before her was the peopled world,
The hollow night behind.

"Below my feet the thunders break,
Above my head the stars rejoice;
But man, although he babbles much,
Has never found a voice.

"Ten thousand years have come and gone, And not an hour of any day

But he has dumbly looked to me
The things he could not say.

"It shall be so no more," she said.
And then, revolving in her mind,
She thought: "I will create a child
Shall speak for all his kind."

It was the spring-time of the year,
And lo, where Avon's waters flow,
The child, her darling, came on earth
Three hundred years ago.

There was no portent in the sky,

No cry, like Pan's, along the seas, Nor hovered round his baby mouth The swarm of classic bees.

What other children were he was,

If more, 'twas not to mortal ken;
The being likest to mankind
Made him the man of men.

They gossiped, after he was dead,
An idle tale of stealing deer;
One thinks he was a lawyer's clerk;
But nothing now is clear,

Save that he married, in his youth,
A maid, his elder; went to town;
Wrote plays; made money; and at last
Came back, and settled down,

A prosperous man, among his kin,

In Stratford, where his bones repose.

And this-what can be less? is all

The world of Shakespeare knows.

It irks us that we know no more,

For where we love we would know all; What would be small in common men

In great is never small.

Their daily habits, how they looked,
The color of their eyes and hair,

Their prayers, their oaths, the wine they drank,
The clothes they used to wear,

Trifles like these declare the men,

And should survive them-nay, they must; We'll find them somewhere; if it needs, We'll rake among their dust!

Not Shakespeare's! He hath left his curse
On him disturbs it: let it rest,

The mightiest that ever Death
Laid in the earth's dark breast.

Not to himself did he belong,

Nor does his life belong to us; Enough he was; give up the search If he were thus, or thus.

Before he came his life was not,

Nor left he heirs to share his powers;

The mighty Mother sent him here,

To be her voice and ours.

To be her oracle to man;

To be what man may be to her; Between the maker and the made The best interpreter.

The hearts of all men beat in his,
Alike in pleasure and in pain;
And he contained their myriad minds,
Mankind in heart and brain.

Shakespeare! What shapes are conjured up
By that one word! They come and go,
More real, shadows though they be,
Than many a man we know.

Hamlet, the Dane, unhappy Prince

Who most enjoys when suffering most:

His soul is haunted by itself—

There needs no other Ghost.

The Thane, whose murderous fancy sees
The dagger painted in the air;
The guilty King, who stands appalled
When Banquo fills his chair.

Lear in the tempest, old and crazed,

"Blow winds. Spit fire, singe my white head!" Or, sadder, watching for the breath