On Lambs Specimens of Dramatic Poets - Sonnets

I.     If all the flowers of all the fields on earth     By wonder-working summer were made one,     Its fragrance were not sweeter in the sun,     Its treasure-house of leaves were not more worth     Than those wherefrom thy light of musing mirth     Shone, till each leaf whereon thy pen would run     Breathed life, and all its breath was benison.     Beloved beyond all names of English birth,     More dear than mightier memories; gentlest name     That ever clothed itself with flower-sweet fame,     Or linked itself with loftiest names of old     By right and might of loving; I, that am     Less than the least of those within thy fold,     Give only thanks for them to thee, Charles Lamb. II.     So many a year had borne its own bright bees     And slain them since thy honey-bees were hived,     John Day, in cells of flower-sweet verse contrived     So well with craft of moulding melodies,     Thy soul perchance in amaranth fields at ease     Thought not to hear the sound on earth revived     Of summer music from the spring derived     When thy song sucked the flower of flowering trees     But thine was not the chance of every day:     Time, after many a darkling hour, grew sunny,     And light between the clouds ere sunset swam,     Laughing, and kissed their darkness all away,     When, touched and tasted and approved, thy honey     Took subtler sweetness from the lips of Lamb.