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.

To O----, OF HER DARK EYES

Across what calm of tropic seas, 'Neath alien clusters of the nights, Looked, in the past, such eyes as these! Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!

The generations fostered them; And steadfast Nature, secretwise-- Thou seedling child of that old stem-- Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.

Was it a century or two This lovely darkness rose and set, Occluded by grey eyes and blue, And Nature feigning to forget?

Some grandam gave a hint of it-- So cherished was it in thy race, So fine a treasure to transmit In its perfection to thy face.

Some father to some mother's breast Entrusted it, unknowing. Time Implied, or made it manifest, Bequest of a forgotten clime.

Hereditary eyes! But this Is single, singular, apart:-- New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss, New-made thy errand to my heart.