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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Shakespeare’s Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Stratford-on-Avon

Shakespeare’s Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon

By Anonymous

GREAT Homer’s birth seven rival cities claim,

Too mighty such monopoly of fame;

Yet not to birth alone did Homer owe

His wondrous worth; what Egypt could bestow,

With all the schools of Greece and Asia joined,

Enlarged the immense expansion of his mind.

Nor yet unrivalled the Mæonian strain,

The British Eagle, and the Mantuan Swan

Tower equal heights. But, happier Stratford, thou

With incontested laurels deck thy brow;

Thy Bard was thine unschooled, and from thee brought

More than all Egypt, Greece, or Asia taught.

Not Homer’s self such matchless honors won;

The Greek has rivals, but thy Shakespeare none.