Sir, since the last Elizabethan died,
Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse,
Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious
Or deeper blindness, no man's hand, as thine,
Has, on the world's most noblest chord of song,
Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate
With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day,
Thrilled to perceive once more the spacious voice
And serene utterance of old. We heard
With rapturous breath half-held, as a dreamer dreams
Who dares not know it dreaming, lest he wake
The odorous, amorous style of poetry,
The melancholy knocking of those lines,
The long, low soughing of pentameters,
Or the sharp of rhyme as a bird's cry
And the innumerable truant polysyllables
Multitudinously twittering like a bee.
Fulfilled our ...