On Reading Shakepeare's Sonnets

THY verse is like a cool and shady well  
 Lying a-dream within some moss-walled close  
 Far from the common way, where violets doze  
In green-deep grass beside the sweet hare-bell.  
 
And each wayfarer as he stoopeth there  
 Doth spy a face that is most like his own,  
 So weary and—ah me!—so woe-begone  
That almost he forgetteth his deep care.  
 
There is a royal restraint in thy sad rhyme,  
 Dis-calmèd calm, and passion passionless,  
 And mellowed is all taint of bitterness  
Into the harmony of that still time  
 
When leaves are yellowing in the sallow sun  
 And evening’s bloom is flush across the sky,  
When haggard summer tottereth in his run  
 And gracious moist-eyed autumn draweth nigh.  
 
O king! majestical in thy decline  
As in thy Spring,—might such an end be mine!