Classic Poem

With frowning brow o'er pontif-kings elate,
Stood Dante, great the man, the poet great.
Milton in might and majesty surpast
The triple world, and far his shade was cast.
On earth he sang amid the Angelic host,
And Paradise to him was never lost.
But there was one who came these two between
With larger light than yet our globe had seen.
Various were his creations, various speech
Without a Babel he bestow'd on each.
Raleigh and Bacon towered above that earth
Which in their day had given our Shakespeare birth,
And neither knew his presence! they half-blind
Saw not in him the grandest of mankind.