Page:Aicard - Molière à Shakspeare, 1879.djvu/11

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It is the Ocean ! You see in him those terrible tides
Which seem the onset of a nightly deluge ;
Screams, sobs, the hurried flights of despairing souls…
It overflows !… Behold, its wave flows back and retires.

Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Lear, — so many tempests !…
O dreams, more real still than beings of flesh,
You also, Desdemona, Ophelia, — you are !
You, pale sisters of the « airy » Ariel.

And you, Romeo, Falstaff, you all are Shakspeare !
And, with words only, — those words which he called vain,
He has created this people, — a people that breathes,
A strange and powerful choir of divine dreams.

Three centuries ago he lived : to England,
Since then, this gentle conqueror has given a world,
And never shall the praise of Nations
Proclaim a nobler and more glorious Poet !…