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-turned and true-filed 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!
To the Memory of the deceased Author, MASTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give The world thy works; thy works, by which outlive Thy tomb thy name must: when that stone is rent, And time dissolves thy Stratford monument, Here we alive shall view thee still: this book, When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look Fresh to all ages; when posterity
Shall loathe what's new, think all is prodigy That is not Shakespeare's, every line, each verse, Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy hearse. Nor fire, nor cankering age, as Naso said Of his, thy wit-fraught book shall once invade:
Nor shall I e'er believe or think thee dead,
Though miss'd, until our bankrout stage be sped (Impossible) with some new strain t' outdo Passions of Juliet, and her Romeo;
Or till I hear a scene more nobly take,
Than when thy half-sword parleying Romans spake :" Till these, till any of thy volume's rest,
Shall with more fire, more feeling, be express'd, Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die, But, crown'd with laurel, live eternally.
To the Memory of MR. W. SHAKESPEARE. We wonder'd, Shakespeare, that thou went'st so soon From the world's stage to the grave's tiring-room: We thought thee dead; but this thy printed worth Tells thy spectators, that thou went'st but forth To enter with applause. An actor's art
Can die, and live to act a second part: That's but an exit of mortality,
This a re-entrance to a plaudite.
Upon the Lines and Life of the famous Scenic Poet, MASTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
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,
The sense of this line is more clearly expressed in some verse by the same author, prefixed to an edition of Shakespeare's Po eins in 1640.
"So have I seen, when Cæsar would appear, And on the stage at half-sword parley were Brutus and Cassius, O, how the audience
Were ravish'd! with what wonder they went thence!
Supposed to be the initials of John Marstor.
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 poet's 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.
ADDITIONAL COMMENDATORY VERSES, Prefixed to the folio of 1632.
Upon the Effigies of my worthy Friend, the Author, MASTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, and his Works.
Spectator, this life's shadow is:
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,
What needs my Shakespeare, for his honour'd bones The labour of an age in piled stones;
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be lud
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
The authorship of these lines was ascertained by their appear
ing in an edition of Milton's Poems, published in 1645.
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 unvalued 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 sepulcher'd, 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 the affections; and by heavenly fire Mould us anew, stolen 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
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