WHILE we keep our Poet's Tercentennial, <br />Every school and city with its emulous <br />Antic or solemnity, what tremulous <br />Laughter on the air! O Puck perennial! <br />Leave us clumsy mortals to our drolleries, <br />Strenuous gambols of Shakespearean gratitude, <br />And be off to find him in Beatitude, <br />Win his genial glance with elf cajoleries, <br />And then tell him of our sage frivolity <br />Till his golden laughter wake eternity, <br />And about him flock his old fraternity, <br />All his scapegrace fellows of the quality, <br />Greene not jealous, Heminge no more stammering, <br />Marlowe one white flame of passion glorious, <br />Rare Ben modest, vagabonds victorious, <br />All about the Master crowding, clamoring, <br />Talking all at once in odes and triolets, <br />Sonnets like the stars for prodigality, <br />While Will Shakespeare loafs with Immortality <br />On a stolen bank of Arden violets.<br /><br />Katharine Lee Bates<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shakespeare-s-festival/
