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HAMLET AT THE BOSTON (TO EDWIN BOOTH), by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: We sit before the row of evening lamps


Hamlet and Booth! It was a wondrous night,
How strange the spell that knit us, each to each!
We stood, we walked, 'neath stars whose kindly light
Shone coldly on us from the vaulted reach
Of high-hung heaven. Not a garrulous tongue
Broke the great stillness, not a hurried foot
Bade the thronged sidewalk its loud chorus fling,
And all around us, through the far-spread throng,
The common pulse of joyous feeling beat.
It was a time for heroes, if they come
In our cold day, when Earth's grey mountains numb
Her fiery heart; and yet, methought, that night
A presence moved among us, keen and bright,
And Hamlet's genius touched us with its wand,
And Booth stood by us, not as one who scanned
The flux of daily life, but from a height
Of large, still contemplation. He, whose might
Had filled our hearts with thoughts of kingship, stood
The equal of the veriest multitude.
The player, though we knew him not as such,
For once forget his wand, and to our clutch
Offered his earnest hand. Did Hamlet stand
Near his own grave that night? I seem to see
The mouldering bones, the skull, the riven brand,
The crowning laurel of mortality,
And, midst them all, that last, long agony,
In which the Prince outleaped his mortal band,
And gathered in one burst his bended powers.
Such scene we saw not; yet through all these hours,
One ghostly presence with us held his ground,
The phantasm of that grief so vast, profound,
It could be grasped by Shakespeare's only hand.
O, Booth! thou didst that fateful theme so grand,
A little longer made our world expand,
The giant lines of death a little soften,
With vision of an immortality,
Which, though we know it not, is yet our own,
The beauty of a life that might have been,
The fullness of a power that we have seen
But for one hour, and which, like to a dream,
Hath left a radiance that will ever beam
Within our souls, until, life's struggles done,
We too shall join the great of every land,
And, through thy art, find fullness of command
In that high realm where life is but begun.






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