Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SHAKESPEARE, by COLIN RAE-BROWN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SHAKESPEARE, by                    
First Line: What glorious victories are here enshrined
Last Line: All coming time shall fail thy like to find!
Subject(s): Admiration; Dramatists; Plays & Playwrights; Poetry & Poets; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)


WHAT glorious victories are here enshrined
In deathless trophies of immortal Mind!
What proud exemption from the common doom
Are lives that need no costly, storied tomb!
How rich the spoils from Death's cold clutches wrung --
How vast the fame that lives on ev'ry tongue!

Such fame is thine, thou first of human kind
By whom the soul's deep myst'ries were defined:
Thou held'st the mirror up to nature's view
And proved the false by setting forth the true:
Dissecting motives of the hidden will
With touch precise and anatomic skill,
Unlocking ev'ry chamber of the heart
That laughs -- or weeps, at bidding of thy Art.

Sun of thy system! whose effulgent rays
Dispel the filmy clouds of mental haze,
Clearing the lab'rinths of Life's devious way
Till darkness seems transparent as the day --
Still unapproach'd throughout the World of Mind,
All Coming Time shall fail thy like to find!





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