Shakespeare - Tercentennial Celebration Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABCC DEDEFG HI HIJJ KLKLMM ANANOO JMJMMM PQPQRR STSTMM UVUVMM WXWXYY MMMMZZ| Who claims our Shakespeare from that realm unknown | A |
| Beyond the storm vexed islands of the deep | B |
| Where Genoa's roving mariner was blown | A |
| Her twofold Saint's day let our England keep | B |
| Shall warring aliens share her holy task | C |
| The Old World echoes ask | C |
| - | |
| O land of Shakespeare ours with all thy past | D |
| Till these last years that make the sea so wide | E |
| Think not the jar of battle's trumpet blast | D |
| Has dulled our aching sense to joyous pride | E |
| In every noble word thy sons bequeathed | F |
| The air our fathers breathed | G |
| - | |
| War wasted haggard panting from the strife | H |
| We turn to other days and far off lands | I |
| - | |
| Live o'er in dreams the Poet's faded life | H |
| Come with fresh lilies in our fevered hands | I |
| To wreathe his bust and scatter purple flowers | J |
| Not his the need but ours | J |
| - | |
| We call those poets who are first to mark | K |
| Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn | L |
| Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark | K |
| While others only note that day is gone | L |
| For him the Lord of light the curtain rent | M |
| That veils the firmament | M |
| - | |
| The greatest for its greatness is half known | A |
| Stretching beyond our narrow quadrant lines | N |
| As in that world of Nature all outgrown | A |
| Where Calaveras lifts his awful pines | N |
| And cast from Mariposa's mountain wall | O |
| Nevada's cataracts fall | O |
| - | |
| Yet heaven's remotest orb is partly ours | J |
| Throbbing its radiance like a beating heart | M |
| In the wide compass of angelic powers | J |
| The instinct of the blindworm has its part | M |
| So in God's kingliest creature we behold | M |
| The flower our buds infold | M |
| - | |
| With no vain praise we mock the stone carved name | P |
| Stamped once on dust that moved with pulse and breath | Q |
| As thinking to enlarge that amplest fame | P |
| Whose undimmed glories gild the night of death | Q |
| We praise not star or sun in these we see | R |
| Thee Father only thee | R |
| - | |
| Thy gifts are beauty wisdom power and love | S |
| We read we reverence on this human soul | T |
| Earth's clearest mirror of the light above | S |
| Plain as the record on thy prophet's scroll | T |
| When o'er his page the effluent splendors poured | M |
| Thine own Thus saith the Lord | M |
| - | |
| This player was a prophet from on high | U |
| Thine own elected Statesman poet sage | V |
| For him thy sovereign pleasure passed them by | U |
| Sidney's fair youth and Raleigh's ripened age | V |
| Spenser's chaste soul and his imperial mind | M |
| Who taught and shamed mankind | M |
| - | |
| Therefore we bid our hearts' Te Deum rise | W |
| Nor fear to make thy worship less divine | X |
| And hear the shouted choral shake the skies | W |
| Counting all glory power and wisdom thine | X |
| For thy great gift thy greater name adore | Y |
| And praise thee evermore | Y |
| - | |
| In this dread hour of Nature's utmost need | M |
| Thanks for these unstained drops of freshening dew | M |
| Oh while our martyrs fall our heroes bleed | M |
| Keep us to every sweet remembrance true | M |
| Till from this blood red sunset springs new born | Z |
| Our Nation's second morn | Z |
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1)
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