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SONNET I.

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy Spring,

Within thine own but buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

Iv seeking to comprehend the true meaning of Shakespeare's poetical emanations, we must take care not to lower his symbols, the pillars of his poetry, to our own tastes and intellects, but rather believe in the innate purity of his mind, and strive to elevate the symbols and also our own reflective powers to the highest realms of thought! The poet in this sonnet apostrophizes some one thus: "But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, making

a famine where abundance lies, thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament, and only herald to the gaudy Spring, within thine own but buriest thy content, and tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding." Now, we would ask, could Shakespeare, by language like this, have aught else in view than intellectual powers, than the waste, the fallowness, the self-consuming of noble, intellectual qualities? And when he speaks of beauty, what can it be but beauty of the mind? This unnamed being whom Shakespeare calls "only herald to the gaudy Spring," i. e. the precursor of a more lovely, perhaps a maturer, fruitful literature;-this being whom he implores to take pity on the world, on the mundane, not to withhold what is due to the life in which it has been planted, not to go down to the grave with the body without leaving an offspring to inherit its remembrance, to propagate an existence which belongs to mankind,-can, surely be no other than the poet himself, his genius, the creative principle of his own mind? Could language like this be, with a shadow of that truthfulness generally claimed for these sonnets, addressed to a person?

Need such single-minded enthusiasm at his own intellectual exuberance, or "beauty," appear so strange in a man whose writings display a most philosophical superiority to personal or party bias, that we should, as of necessity, reduce the splendid symbols through which he opens his heart to us, to a mere material, and even disgusting connexion? Is it then impossible to regard it as an emanation of that same stern cast as the dramas, wherein the poet scourges all sham, cant, arrogance,

and self-delusion, may we not look upon it as an outpouring of the same all-permeating truthfulness which is to be traced in every one of his works?

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Let us suppose Shakespeare in his original lowly, straitened circumstances, let us imagine his gigantic thoughts fretting and chafing in his soul, rising and subsiding; overwhelming and effacing one another like billows of the ocean rolling ever onwards to spend themselves at last on cheerless barren rocks. That a Shakespeare is born, not bred, is understood; it is harder to adopt a true conception of the tremendous barrier which custom, circumstances, and unappreciating friends opposed to the developement, nay even to the dawning of such a genius. The finer, the more sublime the endowment, the more timidly it ventures to shew itself, so much the easier is it hurt, and driven to retreat within itself. When we view his godlike reason "fusting unus'd in him" for want of every opportunity to mould, to develope itself in the world of men; when we consider the pure primary powers of his ego, the tremendous yearning to create, still in its entire abstractive state in him, awaiting, as it were, a womb to shape itself;-how human, how true to nature, how morally pure do these excitations of his inner-self, his ego appear! How frankly, how seriously he here exhorts himself! These verses are a proof, how near mankind were to losing, in the grave, that of Shakespeare which is now the heritage of generations. The assertion that genius overcomes all difficulties, is nothing more than an assertion.

SONNET II.

WHEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gaz'd on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held;
Then, being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer. "This fair child of mine

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Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,
Proving his beauty by succession thine.

This were to be new made, when thou art old,

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And see thy blood warm, when thou feel'st it cold.

How plainly here the poet speaks! In the enormous plenitude of his conceptions which have not as yet found a human sphere to vent themselves, the thought occupies him that his mind as well as his body will grow old, that the exuberance, or beauty, of his intellect, now gazed on with so much admiration, the youthful freshness of his intellectual powers, which now afford him such delight, will gradually decay, some day cease to be, and that, in the field of his intellectual beauty, time will dig deep trenches. If he should then be asked where all his beauty lies, where all the treasure of his lusty days, and he be forced to reply that they were in his own, then, deep-sunken (mind's) eyes, it would be an all-devouring shame, and thriftless praise. But, how much the more would the use of his beauty praise deserve, if he could answer: "This fair child of mine shall sum up my account, and make my old, i. e. late

excuse." He must therefore use his mind's beauty, display

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it in productions, he must create, — beget an intellectual child. By this alone can he be represented in after ages. The beauty of his creations will be pointed out by posterity as belonging to him.*

How delightful the consolatory reflection, that even when his intellect grew aged, when the enthusiasm of youth, his intellectual blood became cold, he could still contemplate in his creations the glowing ardour of his prime!

SONNET III.

LOOK in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest,
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some, mother.
For where is she so fair, whose un-ear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond, will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:

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So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

But if thou live, remember'd not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

RECOGNIZE thyself in the mirror of thine own truthfulness; exclaims Shakespeare to his inner being.Acknowledge the admirable beauty of thine ego:-Thou beguilest the world, mankind; a mother (Art) is deprived by thee of an effective, abundant fructification,

*That these would be dramas, he could at this period, hardly know,

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