When Heaven decreed to soothe the feuds that tore The wolf-eyed barons, whose unletter’d rage Spurn’d the fair muse, Heaven bade on Avon’s shore A Shakespeare rise, and soothe the barbarous age: A Shakespeare rose; the barbarous heats assuage. At distance due how many bards attend! Enlarged and liberal from the narrow cage Of blinded zeal, new manners wide extend, And o’er the generous breast the dews of heaven descend. Introduction to _The Lusiad, or the Discovery of India. An Epic Poem._ Translated, 1775. WILLIAM HAYLEY, 1777 (1745-1820) When mighty Shakespeare to thy judging eye Presents that magic glass whose ample round Reflects each figure in Creation’s bound, And pours, in floods of supernatural light, Fancy’s bright beings on the charmed sight, This chief enchanter of the willing breast Will teach thee all the magic he possessed. Placed in his circle, mark in colours true Each brilliant being that he calls to view: Wrapt in the gloomy storm, or robed in light, His weird sister or his fairy sprite. Boldly o’erleaping, in the great design, The bounds of nature, with a guide divine. _A Poetic Epistle to an Eminent Painter_ [George Romney]. 2nd edition, 1779. Part II. ll. 472-84. THOMAS WARTON, 1777 (1728-1790) Avon, thy rural view, thy pastures wild, The willows that o’erhang thy twilight edge, Their boughs entangling with the embattled sedge; Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fring’d, Thy surface with reflected verdure ting’d; Soothe me with many a pensive pleasure mild. But while I muse, that here the bard divine, Whose sacred dust yon high arch’d aisles enclose, Where the tall windows rise in stately rows Above the embowering shade, Here first, at Fancy’s fairy-circled shrine, Of daisies pied his infant offering made; Here playful yet, in stripling years unripe, Fram’d of thy reeds a shrill and artless pipe: Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled, As at the waving of some magic wand; An holy trance my charmed spirit wings, And awful shapes of warriors and of kings People the busy mead, Like spectres swarming to the wizard’s hall; And slowly pace, and point with trembling hand The wounds ill-cover’d with the purple pall. Before me Pity seems to stand A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore, To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood His robe, with regal woes embroider’d o’er. Pale Terror leads the visionary band, And sternly shakes his sceptre dropping blood. “Monody written near Stratford-upon-Avon.” _Miscellaneous Odes._ 1777. ANNA SEWARD, BEFORE 1782 (1747-1809) “_On Shakespeare’s Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon._”