4.  Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o’erweigh a whole theatre of others.  Oh, there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

William Shakespeare.

The boy and the angel.

Morning, evening, noon and night,
“Praise God!” sang Theocrite. 
Then to his poor trade he turned,
Whereby the daily meal was earned. 
Hard he labored, long and well;
O’er his work the boy’s curls fell. 
But ever, at each period,
He stopped and sang, “Praise God!”

II.

Then back again his curls he threw,
And cheerful turned to work anew. 
Said Blaise, the listening monk, “Well done;
I doubt not thou art heard, my son: 
As well as if thy voice to-day
Were praising God, the Pope’s great way. 
This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome
Praises God from Peter’s dome.”

III.

Said Theocrite, “Would God that I
Might praise him, that great way, and die!”
Night passed, day shone,
And Theocrite was gone. 
With God a day endures alway,
A thousand years are but a day. 
God said in heaven, “Nor day nor night
Now brings the voice of my delight.”

IV.

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow’s birth,
Spread his wings and sank to earth;
Entered, in flesh, the empty cell,
Lived there, and played the craftsman well;
And morning, evening, noon and night,
Praised God in place of Theocrite. 
And from a boy, to youth he grew: 
The man put off the stripling’s hue: 

V.

The man matured and fell away
Into the season of decay: 
And ever o’er the trade he bent,
And ever lived on earth content. 
(He did God’s will; to him, all one
If on the earth or in the sun.)
God said, “A praise is in mine ear;
There is no doubt in it, no fear: 

VI.

“So sing old worlds, and so
New worlds that from my footstool go. 
Clearer loves sound other ways;
I miss my little human praise.” 
Then forth sprang Gabriel’s wings, off fell
The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 
’Twas Easter Day:  he flew to Rome,
And paused above Saint Peter’s dome.

VII.

In the tiring-room close by
The great outer gallery,
With his holy vestments dight,
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite;
And all his past career
Came back upon him clear,
Since when, a boy, he plied his trade,
Till on his life the sickness weighed;