Listen, I pray you, a ballad of song
Of Bardic heroes throughout all time
Echoing notes in history all along
Telling tales and legends to a rhyme
Greek scrolls, Roman walls, drew tales of Pan
Mythical, and satirical, legend of repute
God of nature, with goatish stature, and part man
With songs of story to his signatory flute
Biblical word spoke of a shepherd
David, says Samuel, Israel’s sweetest psalmist
A poet and prophet become King to be referred
As Goliath’s killer and the idealist harpist
Pan King David
A bard was not a bard till the tales of Thomas Gray
A Welsh hero, the bard praised portents of plot
As a dormant red dragon, the Welsh would lay
Till the day to bring England’s King an onslaught
British blood abound for years on the ground
Till the Welsh were dispersed by Lord Edward the first
And he declared that he was heir to the crown
Wales waited unabated until they’d immerse
Tales of their strength spread through the country
Till Taliesin, a citizen of what was Briton
Not only a knight but an Arthurian devotee
Telling tales to Kings and sing of things to come
History echoed of these heroic poets and of bards
From Pan to David, Gray to Taliesen, till at last
To our time come, and the one whom to give regards
Shakespeare of Avon, a bard now unsurpassed
Shakespeare’s plays and poems paralleled Pan
Tragic yet avid like the lavish King David
Brass wordplay like a protege of Thomas Gray
William’s distinction a legend akin to Taliesen
From flutes and harps, poems and verse, fables and lore
Bards will carve legends and myths, books and stories, for evermore
William “The Bard” Shakespeare