PROLOGUE TO THE SPANISH GIPSY

The wind that brings us from the springtide south

Strange music as from love's or life's own mouth

Blew hither, when the blast of battle ceased

That swept back southward Spanish prince and priest,

A sound more sweet than April's flower-sweet rain,

And bade bright England smile on pardoned Spain.

The land that cast out Philip and his God

Grew gladly subject where Cervantes trod.

Even he whose name above all names on earth

Crowns England queen by grace of Shakespeare's birth

Might scarce have scorned to smile in God's wise down

And gild with praise from heaven an earthlier crown.

And he whose hand bade live down lengthening years

Quixote, a name lit up with smiles and tears,

Gave the glad watchword of the gipsies’ life,

Where fear took hope and grief took joy to wife.

Times change, and fame is fitful as the sea:

But sunset bids not darkness always be,

And still some light from Shakespeare and the sun

Burns back the cloud that masks not Middleton.

With strong swift strokes of love and wrath he drew

Shakespearean London's loud and lusty crew:

No plainer might the likeness rise and stand

When Hogarth took his living world in hand.

No surer then his fire-fledged shafts could hit,

Winged with as forceful and as faithful wit:

No truer a tragic depth and heat of heart

Glowed through the painter's than the poet's art.

He lit and hung in heaven the wan fierce moon

Whose glance kept time with witchcraft's air-struck tune:

He watched the doors where loveless love let in

The pageant hailed and crowned by death and sin:

He bared the souls where love, twin-born with hate,

Made wide the way for passion-fostered fate.

All English-hearted, all his heart arose

To scourge with scorn his England's cowering foes:

And Rome and Spain, who bade their scorner be

Their prisoner, left his heart as England's free.

Now give we all we may of all his due

To one long since thus tried and found thus true.