To The Greatest Poet We Have Ever Known Poem by David Mitchell

'My gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead,
You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
Where breathe most breathes, even in the mouths of men.'

William Shakespeare, I am in awe of you.
Your work has been read, studied, loved, hated, adapted, plagiarized, and admired, continuously for four hundred years.
Milton alone is within a thousand miles of your genius.
You went to heaven nearly four hundred years ago: would that you were still with us!
But you will always be with us.

It is amazing what one human being can do.

(Thursday,3rd November,2005.)