Ode to Shakespeare

O muse-kissed poet, buried long, beneath green English hills,
A headstone, curse inscribed, within a church, 'twixt windswept rills.
You lie there, centuries dead, and yet your words undying live:
Now made immortal for mankind, this humble gift you give.

These phrases that address you now, your phrases far outshine:
'Midst all your plain-bread dialogues, are finest meats and wine.
What is the essence of your glories, penned so long ago?
Is it perfection? Nay, 'tis not, though many words be so.

For countless truths, ideals eternal, in your dramas dwell:
An essence 'neath your words, a meaning on them you compel.
For though a man may languish dead within a gaping grave,
His words live on, eternal, constant, every age to have.

Shall then ideas, truths and lies, once born, not ever die?
Do thoughts live on past thinker's deaths, eternal as the sky?
For though what's passed is gone, what made it so yet still remains:
Remember then, each man to thank his fathers for their pains.