PROLOGUE TO THE BROKEN HEART

The 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.

Sublime with stars and sunset fire, the sky

Glowed as though day, nigh dead, should never die.

Sorrow supreme and strange as chance or doom

Shone, spake, and shuddered through the lustrous gloom.

Tears lit with love made all the darkening air

Bright as though death's dim sunrise thrilled it there

And life re-risen took comfort. Stern and still

As hours and years that change and anguish fill,

The strong secluded spirit, ere it woke,

Dwelt dumb till power possessed it, and it spoke.

Strange, calm, and sure as sense of beast or bird,

Came forth from night the thought that breathed the word;

That chilled and thrilled with passion-stricken breath

Halls where Calantha trod the dance of death.

A strength of soul too passionately pure

To change for aught that horror bids endure,

To quail and wail and weep faint life away

Ere sovereign sorrow smite, relent, and slay,

Sustained her silent, till her bridal bloom

Changed, smiled, and waned in rapture toward the tomb.

Terror twin-born with pity kissed and thrilled

The lips that Shakespeare's word or Webster's filled:

Here both, cast out, fell silent: pity shrank,

Rebuked, and terror, spirit-stricken, sank:

The soul assailed arose afar above

All reach of all but only death and love.