Toward Spenser or toward Bacon proud or kind
  He bared the heart of Essex, twain and one,
For the base heart that soiled the starry mind
  Stern, for the father in his child undone
Soft as his own toward children, stamped and signed
  With their sweet image visibly set on
As by God’s hand, clear as his own designed
  The likeness radiant out of ages gone
      That none may now destroy
      Of that high Roman boy
  Whom Julius and Cleopatra saw their son
      True-born of sovereign seed,
      Foredoomed even thence to bleed,
  The stately grace of bright Caesarion,
    The head unbent, the heart unbowed,
That not the shadow of death could make less clear and proud.

47.

With gracious gods he communed, honouring thus
  At once by service and similitude,
Service devout and worship emulous
  Of the same golden Muses once they wooed,
The names and shades adored of all of us,
  The nurslings of the brave world’s earlier brood,
Grown gods for us themselves:  Theocritus
  First, and more dear Catullus, names bedewed
      With blessings bright like tears
      From the old memorial years,
  And loves and lovely laughters, every mood
      Sweet as the drops that fell
      Of their own oenomel
  From living lips to cheer the multitude
    That feeds on words divine, and grows
More worthy, seeing their world reblossom like a rose.

48.

Peace, the soft seal of long life’s closing story,
  The silent music that no strange note jars,
Crowned not with gentler hand the years that glory
  Crowned, but could hide not all the spiritual scars
Time writes on the inward strengths of warriors hoary
  With much long warfare, and with gradual bars
Blindly pent in:  but these, being transitory,
  Broke, and the power came back that passion mars: 
      And at the lovely last
      Above all anguish past
  Before his own the sightless eyes like stars
      Arose that watched arise
      Like stars in other skies
  Above the strife of ships and hurtling cars
    The Dioscurian songs divine
That lighten all the world with lightning of their line.

49.

He sang the last of Homer, having sung
  The last of his Ulysses.  Bright and wide
For him time’s dark strait ways, like clouds that clung
  About the day-star, doubtful to divide,
Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue
  Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried,
Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung,
  Homer, and grey Laertes at his side
      Kingly as kings are none
      Beneath a later sun,
  And the sweet maiden ministering in pride
      To sovereign and to sage
      In their more sweet old age: 
  These things he sang, himself as old, and died. 
    And if death be not, if life be,
As Homer and as Milton are in heaven is he.