Bayard Taylor, 1872 (1825-1878)
“Shakespeare’s Statue,
Central Park, New York, 23 May 1872.”
Here, in his right, he stands!
No breadth of earth-dividing seas can bar
The breeze of morning, or the morning star,
From visiting our lands:
His wit the breeze, his wisdom as the star,
Shone where our earliest life was set, and blew
To freshen hope and plan
In brains American,—
To urge, resist, encourage, and subdue!
He came, a household ghost we could not ban:
He sat, on winter nights, by cabin fires;
His summer fairies linked their hands
Along our yellow sands;
He preached within the shadow of our spires;
And when the certain Fate drew nigh, to cleave
The birth-cord, and a separate being leave,
He, in our ranks of patient-hearted men,
Wrought with the boundless forces of his fame,
Victorious, and became
The Master of our thought, the land’s first Citizen!
If, here, his image seem
Of softer scenes and grayer skies to dream,
Thatched cot and rustic tavern, ivied hall,
The cuckoo’s April call
And cowslip-meads beside the Avon stream,
He shall not fail that other home to find
We could not leave behind!
The forms of Passion, which his fancy drew,
In us their ancient likenesses beget:
So, from our lives for ever born anew,
He stands amid his own creations yet!
Here comes lean Cassius, of conventions tired;
Here, in his coach, luxurious Antony
Beside his Egypt, still of men admired;
And Brutus plans some purer liberty!
A thousand Shylocks, Jew and Christian, pass;
A hundred Hamlets, by their times betrayed;
And sweet Anne Page comes tripping o’er the grass,
And awkward Falstaff pants beneath the shade.
Here toss upon the wanton summer wind
The locks of Rosalind;
Here some gay glove the damned spot conceals
Which Lady Macbeth feels:
His ease here smiling smooth Iago takes,
And outcast Lear gives passage to his woe,
And here some foiled Reformer sadly breaks
His wand of Prospero!
In liveried splendour, side by side,
Nick Bottom and Titania ride,
And Portia, flushed with cheers of men,
Disdains dear faithful Imogen;
And Puck beside the form of Morse,
Stops on his forty-minute course;
And Ariel from his swinging bough
A blossom casts on Bryant’s brow,
Until, as summoned from his brooding brain,
He sees his children all again,
In us, as on our lips, each fresh, immortal strain!
Poetical Works. Stanzas II.-III. 1880, p. 224.