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The cliffs of England; this a grateful tear

Brought from the anxious hearts, which almost shamed

Sordino whom this sight left quite unmoved.

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Fair England, long by God elect and blessed,

His chosen land, as Palestine of old,

From which His light to all the world has shone,

Where Freedom sits with monarchs on their throne,

Where truth, more precious than the ruddy gold,

Is by her wise men fearlessly professed.

Where he, the many-minded genius

Arose to make her name and tongue immortal,

With never dying characters and song,

Who knew the soul among the vulgar throng,

As well as that of kings in castle portal,

And made them all so much akin to us.

Great Shakespeare, harbinger of Britain’s glory,

The child of ages, product of a race,

Born in the fulness of the time,—the world awaking

To a new day, its rusty fetters breaking,—

He with his torch showed it the better ways,

And linked the new with ancient fairy-story.

Sordino’s times were all with forces seething,