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In slipshod, careless rhyme,

A legendary lay

Of Willy’s golden time.

One balmy summer’s night,

As Stratford yeomen tell,

One Will, the royst’ring wight,

Beneath a crab tree fell;

And, sunk in deep repose,

The tipsy time beguiled,

Till Dan Apollo rose

Upon his greatest child.

Since then all people vowed

The tree had wondrous power:

With sense, with speech endowed,

’Twould prattle by the hour;

Though scattered far about,

Its remnants still would blab:

Mind, ere this fact you doubt,—

It was a female crab.

“I felt,” thus spoke the tree,

“As down the poet lay,

A touch, a thrill, a glee,

Ne’er felt before that day.

Along my verdant blood

A quick’ning sense did shoot,

Expanding every bud,

And rip’ning all my fruit.

“What sounds did move the air,

Around me and above!

The yell of mad despair,

The burning sigh of love!

Ambition, guilt-possessed,

Suspicion on the rack,

The ringing laugh and jest,

Begot by sherris-sack!

“Since then, my branches full

Of Shakespeare’s vital heat,

My fruit, once crude and dull