Three centuries have passed away + 

Since that most famous April day, + 

When the sweet, gentle Will was born, + 

Whose name the age will e’re adorn. + 

That great Elizabethan age + 

Does not leave on history’s page, + 

A name so bright he stands like Saul, + 

A head and shoulders over all. + 

Delineator of mankind, + 

Who shows the workings of the mind, + 

And in review in nature’s glass, + 

Portrays the thoughts of every class. + 

That man is dull who will not laugh + 

At the drolleries of Falstaff, + 

And few that could not shed a tear + 

At sorrows of poor old King Lear. + 

Or lament o’er King Duncan’s death + 

Stabbed by the dagger of McBeth, + 

Or gentle Desdemona pure, + 

Slain by the misled jealous Moor. + 

Or great Caesar mighty Roman + 

Who o’ercame his country’s foemen, + 

His high deeds are all in vain, + 

For by his countrymen he’s slain. + 

The greatest of heroic tales + 

Is that of Harry, Prince of Wales, + 

Who in combat fought so fiercely + 

With the brave and gallant Percy. + 

Imagination’s grandest theme + 

The tempest or midsummer’s dream, + 

And Hamlet’s philosophic blaze + 

Of shattered reason’s flickering rays. + 

And now in every land on earth + 

They commemorate Shakespeare’s birth, + 

And there is met on Avon’s banks + 

Men of all nations and all ranks. + 

And here upon Canadian Thames + 

The gentle maids and comely dames + 

Do meet and each does bring her scroll + 

Of laurel leaves from Ingersoll. + 

Milton + 

Like mightiest organ in full tone, + 

Melodious, grand, is great Milton, + 

He did in lofty measures tell + 

How Satan, great archangel, fell, + 

When from heaven downward hurled; + 

And how he ruined this our world, + 

So full of guile he did deceive + 

Our simple hearted parent Eve. + 

He shows how pardon is obtained + 

And paradise may be regained. + 

Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth + 

England had triplets at a birth, + 

Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth, + 

And these three are widely famed, + 

And the “Lake Poets” they were named. + 

With joy they did pursue their themes, + 

’Mong England’s lakes and hills and streams, + 

From there with gladness they could view + 

The distant Scottish mountains blue. + 

Shelly + 

We have scarcely time to tell thee + 

Of the strange and gifted Shelly, + 

Kind hearted man but ill-fated, + 

So youthful, drowned and cremated. + 

Byron + 

Poets they do pursue each theme, + 

Under a gentle head of steam, + 

Save one who needed fierce fire on, + 

The brilliant, passionate Byron. + 

His child Harold’s pilgrimage, + 

Forever will the world engage; + 

He fought with glory to release + 

From Turkish yoke the isles of Greece, + 

Its glories oft by him were sung, + 

This wondrous bard, alas, died young. + 

Tennyson + 

Of our Laureate we now do sing, + 

His youthful muse had daring wing, + 

He then despised Baronhood, + 

And sang ’twas noble to be good. + 

None sang like him of knights of old, + 

He England’s glory did uphold; + 

In wondrous song he hath arrayed + 

Glorious charge of light brigade, + 

And he hath the people’s benison, + 

Greatest of living poets Tennyson. + 

Dryden and Pope + 

Genius of Dryden and of Pope, + 

Both did take a mighty scope, + 

The first he Virgil did translate, + 

The second showed us Troys fate. + 

On English themes they oft did sing + 

And high their muses flight did wing. + 