Richard Watson Gilder, 1891 (B. 1844)
“The Twenty-Third of April.”
A little English earth and breathèd air
Made Shakespeare the divine; so is his verse
The broidered soil of every blossom fair;
So doth his song all sweet bird-songs rehearse.
But tell me, then, what wondrous stuff did fashion
That part of him which took those wilding flights
Among imagined worlds; whence the white passion
That burned three centuries through the days and nights!
Not heaven’s four winds could make, nor round the earth,
The soul wherefrom the soul of Hamlet flamed;
Nor anything of merely mortal birth
Could lighten as when Shakespeare’s name is named.
How was his body bred we know full well,
But that high soul’s engendering who may tell!
“Five Books of Song.” IV. The Two Worlds. 1894, p. 154.