Miracle, and Other Poems

<h2 id="id00075" style="margin-top: 4em">AT THE PLAY</h2> <p id="id00076">Just above the boxes and where the high lights fall<br/> Looketh down a carven face from out the gilded wall.<br/></p> <p id="id00077">Van Dyke beard and broidered ruff silently confess<br/> That he lived—and loved perchance—in days of Good Queen Bess.<br/> (Laces fine and linen sheer, curled and perfumed hair<br/> Well became those gentlemen of gay, insouciant air.)<br/></p> <p id="id00078">See! He gazeth evermore at the stage below;<br/> Noteth well the players as they quickly come and go;<br/> Queens and kings and maidens fair, motley fools and friars,<br/> Lords and ladies, stately dames, mounted knights and squires.<br/></p> <p id="id00079">Well he knoweth all of them, all the grave and gay,<br/> These are they he dreamt of in the far and far away;<br/> Saints and sinners, see they come down the bygone years,<br/> And the world still shares with them its laughter and its tears.<br/></p> <p id="id00080">Still we haunt the greenwood for love of Rosalind,<br/> Still we hear the Jester's bells ajingle on the wind,<br/> Still the frenzied Moor we fear—Ah! and even yet<br/> Breathless wait before the tomb of all the Capulet.<br/></p> <p id="id00081">Though the slow years pass away, yet on land and sea,<br/> Follow we the Danish Prince in sad soliloquy;<br/> And I fancy sometimes when the round moon saileth high<br/> Yet in Venice meet the Jew—as he goeth by.<br/></p> <p id="id00082">(Just above the boxes and where the high lights fall<br/> Looketh down a carven face from out the gilded wall.)<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />