[240] Shakespeare’s Strumpf.
(Bei Gelegenheit eines Leipziger Festes, wo man mit einer
Schillerschen Weste Götzendienst trieb.)
Hochgesprungen, lautgesungen!
Wenn verschimmelt auch und dumpf,...
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I. Sonnet irrégulier
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.
Shakespeare, sonnet CXXIIIO temps ! ô conquérant ! te voici vaincu, toi
L’invincible, toi qui gardes un front tranquille !
Tu te vantes que tout change. Certes. Mais moi
Pourtant,... -
Dismiss your apprehension, pseudo bard,
For no one wishes to disturb these stones,
Nor cares if here or in the outer yard
They stow your impudent, deceitful bones.Your foolish-colored bust upon the wall,
With its preposterous expanse of brow,
Shall rival Humpty Dumpty’s famous fall,
And cheats no cultured Boston people now.... -
I wish that I could have my wish to-night,
For all the fairies should assist my flight
Back into the abyss of years;
Till I could see the streaming light,
And hear the music of the spheres
That sang together at the joyous birth
Of that immortal mind,
The noblest of his kind,—
The only Shakespeare that has graced... -
Thou, who didst lay all other bosoms bare,
Impenetrable shade didst round thee throw;
And of the ready tears thou makest flow,
Monarch of tears, thou hast not any share.
Sad Petrarch, sadder Byron their despair
Unlocked, their dismal theatres of woe
Unclosed: thou showest Hamlet, Romeo,
And maddened Lear, with tempest on his hair.... -
This figure, 1 that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Graver had a strife
With Nature to outdo the life:
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he hath hit
His face; the Print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass.
But since he cannot, Reader, look
Not at his... -
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.* * * * *
Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
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From “Prologue”
[Spoken by Mr. Garrick at the opening of the Theatre in Drury Lane, in 1747.]WHEN Learning’s triumph o’er her barbarous foes
First reared the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;
Each change of many-colored life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time... -
What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones?
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing 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 livelong monument.
For... -
The Soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathomed centre. Like that ark,
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O’er the drowned hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind,
So, in the compass of the single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That...