AT THE SARAH-BERNHARDT THEATRE, a poem

NOTHING that man's creative mind hath wrought
     Is wholly foreign to the mind of man:
     He looks before and after; in his span
Of life infinities of life are caught,—
Brooding, mysterious, and travail-fraught,—
     And near and distant answer, as they can,
     Enkindled at the flame Promethean
Of world-embracing, heaven-illumined Thought!

Last night a woman played in Paris here
     The rôle of Hamlet, each distinctive grace,
     By genius all-subduing and sublime,
     Made native in an alien land and time,—
As though she, listening with accustomed ear,
     Had learned of English Shakespeare, face to face!

"At The Sarah-Bernhardt Theatre" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (March 1901), Mine and Thine (1904) and Poems (1916) Volume II.