On Reading Shakepeare's Sonnets

THY verse is like a cool and shady well   
 Lying a-dream within some moss-walled close   
 Far from the common way, where violets doze   
In green-deep grass beside the sweet hare-bell.   
  
And each wayfarer as he stoopeth there           
 Doth spy a face that is most like his own,   
 So weary and—ah me!—so woe-begone   
That almost he forgetteth his deep care.   
  
There is a royal restraint in thy sad rhyme,   
 Dis-calmèd calm, and passion passionless,           
 And mellowed is all taint of bitterness   
Into the harmony of that still time   
  
When leaves are yellowing in the sallow sun   
 And evening’s bloom is flush across the sky,   
When haggard summer tottereth in his run           
 And gracious moist-eyed autumn draweth nigh.   
  
O king! majestical in thy decline   
As in thy Spring,—might such an end be mine!