Page:A channel passage and other poems (IA channelpassageot00swinrich).pdf/206



mightiest choir of song that memory hears Gave England voice for fifty lustrous years. Sunrise and thunder fired and shook the skies That saw the sun-god Marlowe's opening eyes. The morn's own music, answered of the sea, Spake, when his living lips bade Shakespeare be, And England, made by Shakespeare's quickening breath Divine and deathless even till life be death, Brought forth to time such godlike sons of men That shamefaced love grows pride, and now seems then. Shame that their day so shone, so sang, so died, Remembering, finds remembrance one with pride. That day was clouding toward a stormlit close When Ford's red sphere upon the twilight rose.