If this great image were by ocean thrown
Among some people who have never yet
Learn'd in the mind's creations to forget
Life's pressure, and the melancholy stone
Were on a rock for savage wonder set,
Methinks some sense of Shakspeare's world unknown
Would dawn on spirits reverential grown
To strange divinity, as if they met
A bodied fragment of the poet's soul;-
And while the spectral gaze and withering hand
Urge silence, such as that which death's control
Rules,-on the thoughts of that astonish'd band
Shapes from the noblest scenes by mortal plann'd
Would rise, and breathe the grandeur of the whole.