Classic Poem

Southwark. London.

St. Mary Overie's once, St. Saviour's now,
A thousand years of sanctity are thine.
Crusaders, martyrs, sages, queens endow
With memories thy venerable shrine.
The poets' pilgrim with hushed footfall roams
Through whispering aisles of old, melodious names,
— Grave Gower, pillowed on his ponderous tomes;
Fletcher, too far from Beaumont, leaping flames
That blended into one immortal glow;
And " Massinger, A Stranger. " Ah, and well
The heart may hear from out the Long Ago
That throbbing " forenoon knell of the great bell, "
When Shakespeare paced beside a brother's bier,
Musing on broken hopes and plans ill-sped,
And gently laid the unlaureled dreamer here
Among the stateliest of Southwark's dead.
Long have the echoes of the voices slept
That chanted the young player to his rest,
But in the church where William Shakespeare wept,
A ghostly sorrow steals upon the breast.