Thomas Hardy - To Shakespeare After Three Hundred Years lyrics

Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes, Thou, who display'dst a life of common-place, Leaving no intimate word or personal trace Of high design outside the artistry Of thy penned dreams, Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally. Through human orbits thy discourse to-day, Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on In harmonies that cow Oblivion, And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect Maintain a sway Not fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked. And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour, The Avon just as always gla**ed the tower, Thy age was published on thy pa**ing-bell But in due rote With other dwellers' d**hs accorded a like knell. And at the strokes some townsman (met, maybe, And thereon queried by some squire's good dame Driving in shopward) may have given thy name, With, "Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do; Though, as for me, I knew him but by just a neighbour's nod, 'tis true. "I' faith, few knew him much here, save by word, He having elsewhere led his busier life; Though to be sure he left with us his wife." —"Ah, one of the tradesmen's sons, I now recall . . . Witty, I've heard . . . We did not know him . . . Well, good-day. d**h comes to all." So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find To mingle with the barn-door brood awhile, Then vanish from their homely domicile - Into man's poesy, we wot not whence, Flew thy strange mind, Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped for ever thence. 1916.