To W. C. Macready

FAREWELL, Macready, since to-night we part;
Full-handed thunders often have confessed
Thy power, well-used to move the public breast.
We thank thee with our voice, and from the heart.
Farewell, Macready, since this night we part,
Go, take thine honours home; rank with the best,
Garrick and statelier Kemble, and the rest
Who made a nation purer through their art.
Thine is it that our drama did not die,
Nor flicker down to brainless pantomime,
.And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see.
Farewell, Macready; moral, grave, sub-lime;
Our Shakespeare's bland and universal eye
Dwells pleased, through twice a hundred years, on thee.