STRATFORD UPON AVON.
What nurtured Shakspeare mid these village-shades,
Making a poor deer-stalking lad, a king
In the broad realm of mind?
I questioned much
Whatever met my view, the holly-hedge,
The cottage-rose, the roof where he was born,
And the pleached avenue of limes, that led
To the old Church. And pausing there, I marked
The mossy efflorescence on the stones,
Which, kindling in the sun-beam, taught me how
Its little seeds were fed by mouldering life,
And how another race of tiny roots,
The fathers of the future, should compel
From hardest-hearted rocks a nutriment,
Until the fern-plant and the ivy sere
Made ancient buttress and grim battlement
Their nursing-mothers.
But again I asked,
"What nurtured Shakspeare?" The rejoicing birds
Wove a wild song, whose burden seemed to be,
He was their pupil when he chose, and knew
