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| HOW little fades from earth when sink to rest | |
| The hours and cares that mov’d a great man’s breast! | |
| Though naught of all we saw the grave may spare, | |
| His life pervades the world’s impregnate air; | |
| Though Shakespeare’s dust beneath our footsteps lies, | 5 |
| His spirit breathes amid his native skies; | |
| With meaning won from him forever glows | |
| Each air that England feels, and star it knows; | |
| His whisper’d words from many a mother’s voice | |
| Can make her sleeping child in dreams rejoice, | 10 |
| And gleams from spheres he first conjoin’d to earth | |
| Are blent with rays of each new morning’s birth. | |
| Amid the sights and tales of common things, | |
| Leaf, flower, and bird, and wars, and deaths of kings, | |
| Of shore, and sea, and nature’s daily round, | 15 |
| Of life that tills, and tombs that load the ground, | |
| His visions mingle, swell, command, pace by, | |
| And haunt with living presence heart and eye; | |
| And tones from him by other bosoms caught | |
| Awaken flush and stir of mounting thought, | 20 |
| And the long sigh, and deep impassion’d thrill, | |
| Rouse custom’s trance, and spur the faltering will. | |
| Above the goodly land more his than ours | |
| He sits supreme enthron’d in skyey towers, | |
| And sees the heroic brood of his creation | 25 |
| Teach larger life to his ennobled nation. | |
| O shaping brain! O flashing fancy’s hues! | |
| O boundless heart kept fresh by pity’s dews! | |
| O wit humane and blithe! O sense sublime | |
| For each dim oracle of mantled Time! | 30 |
| Transcendent Form of Man! in whom we read | |
| Mankind’s whole tale of Impulse, Thought, and Deed; | |
| Amid the expanse of years beholding thee, | |
| We know how vast our world of life may be; | |
| Wherein, perchance, with aims as pure as thine, | 35 |
| Small tasks and strength may be no less divine. | |
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