| Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918. |
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| 77. On Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets |
| | | By G. W. L. Marshall-Hall |
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| 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. | |
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| And each wayfarer as he stoopeth there | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| There is a royal restraint in thy sad rhyme, | |
| Dis-calmèd calm, and passion passionless, | 10 |
| And mellowed is all taint of bitterness | |
| Into the harmony of that still time | |
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| When leaves are yellowing in the sallow sun | |
| And evening’s bloom is flush across the sky, | |
| When haggard summer tottereth in his run | 15 |
| And gracious moist-eyed autumn draweth nigh. | |
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| O king! majestical in thy decline | |
| As in thy Spring,—might such an end be mine! | |
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