A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,—
I mean, with great but disproportion'd Muses;
For if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line:
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee I would not seek
For names; but call forth thundering Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage; or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain! thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time;
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm.
A little nearer Spenser; to make room
For Shakespeare in your three-fold four-fold tomb:
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until doomsday; for hardly will a fifth,
Betwixt this day and that, by fate be slain,
For whom your curtains may be drawn again.
But if precedency in death doth bar
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this carvèd marble of thine own,
Sleep, rare tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone:
Thy unmolested peace, unsharèd cave,
Possess as lord, not tenant, of thy grave;
That unto us and others it may be
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee."
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines;
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As since she will vouchsafe no other wit:
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part:
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are,) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
(And himself with it,) that he thinks to frame;
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,—
For a good poet's made, as well as born:
And such wert thou. Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-tornèd and true-filèd lines•;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James !
But stay; I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a constellation there:
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage;
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.
Upon the lines and life of the famous scenic poet, Master William
Those hands which you so clapp'd, go now and wring,
You Britons brave; for done are Shakespeare's days;
His days are done that made the dainty plays,
Which made the Globe of heaven and earth to ring:
Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian spring,
Turn'd all to tears, and Phoebus clouds his rays:
That corpse, that coffin, now bestick those bays,
Which crown'd him poet first, then poets' king.
If tragedies might any prologue have,
All those he made would scarce make one to this;
Where Fame, now that he gone is to the grave,
(Death's public tiring-house,) the Nuntius is:
For, though his line of life went soon about,
The life yet of his lines shall never out.
COMMENDATORY VERSES PREFIXED TO THE FOLIO OF 1632.3
Upon the effigies of my worthy friend, the author, Master William Shakespeare and his works.
Spectator, this life's shadow is :-to see
This truer image and a livelier he,
Turn reader. But observe his comic vein,
Laugh; and proceed next to a tragic strain,
Then weep: so,-when thou find'st two contraries,
Two different passions from thy rapt soul rise,-
Say (who alone effect such wonders could)
Rare Shakespeare to the life thou dost behold.
An epitaph on the admirable dramatic poet, W. Shakespeare.
What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones.
The labour of an age in pilèd stones,
3 Which gives them in addition to those first printed in the folio of 1623. 4 Is without the author's name in the folio of 1632. The reader need hardly be informed that it was written by Milton; whose own corrected text (in his Poems, 1645) is now adopted.
Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a live-long monument:
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow; and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulchrèd, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
On worthy Master Shakespeare and his poems.
A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear
Distant a thousand years, and represent
Them in their lively colours, just extent:
To outrun hasty Time, retrieve the Fates,
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of Death and Lethe, where confused lie
Great heaps of ruinous mortality:
In that deep dusky dungeon to discern
A royal ghost from churls; by art to learn
The physiognomy of shades, and give
Them sudden birth, wondering how oft they live;
What story coldly tells, what poets feign
At second hand, and picture without brain,
Senseless and soul-less shows: to give a stage
(Ample, and true with life) voice, action, age,
As Plato's year, and new scene of the world,
Them unto us, or us to them had hurl'd:
To raise our ancient sovereigns from their hearse,
Make kings his subjects; by exchanging verse
Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age
Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage:
Yet so to temper passion, that our ears
Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears
Both
weep and smile; fearful at plots so sad,
Then laughing at our fear; abus'd, and glad
To be abus'd; affected with that truth
Which we perceive is false, pleas'd in that ruth
At which we start, and by elaborate play
Tortur'd and tickled; by a crab-like way
Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort
Disgorging up his ravin for our sport:-
While the plebeian imp, from lofty throne,
Creates and rules a world, and works upon
Mankind by secret engines; now to move
A chilling pity, then a rigorous love;
To strike up and stroke down, both joy and ire;
To steer th' affections; and by heavenly fire
Mould us anew, stol'n from ourselves :
This, and much more which cannot be express'd
But by himself, his tongue, and his own breast,
Was Shakespeare's freehold; which his cunning brain.
Improv'd by favour of the nine-fold train;
The buskin'd Muse, the comic queen, the grand
And louder tone of Clio, nimble hand
And nimbler foot of the melodious pair,
The silver-voiced lady, the most fair
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose praise the heavenly body chants;
These jointly woo'd him, envying one another,
(Obey'd by all as spouse, but lov'd as brother,)
And wrought a curious robe, of sable grave,
Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white,
The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright;
Branch'd and embroider'd like the painted spring;
Each leaf match'd with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run
Italian works, whose thread the sisters spun;
5 Capell printed "Calliope, she whose," &c., because the word "whose" does not refer to Calliope, but to a different Muse.
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