On An Anniversary

[After reading the dates in a book of Lyrics.]

With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen

We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green:

The Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine,

Is Crashaw's niche, that honey-lipped divine.

And so when all my little work is done

They'll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,

And died in Dublin…. What year will they write

For my poor passage to the stall of Night?