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... -
The Folk who lived in Shakespeare’s day
And saw that gentle figure pass
By London Bridge, his frequent way—
They little knew what man he was.The pointed beard, the courteous mien,
The equal port to high and low,
All this they saw or might have seen—
But not the light behind the brow!The doublet’s modest gray or brown,...
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Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will;
And famous Jonson, though his learnèd pen
He dipped in Castaly, is still but Ben.
Fletcher and Webster, of that learnèd pack
None of the meanest, was but Jack;
Dekker but Tom, nor May, nor Middleton,
And he’s but now Jack Ford that once was John. -
Prefixed to “Paradise Lost”
THREE Poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the former two. -
“London, 1802”
milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower.
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners,... -
From “Ecclesiastical Sonnets,” Part III.
THERE are no colors in the fairest sky
So fair as these. The feather, whence the pen
Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men
Dropped from an angel’s wing. With moistened eye
We read of faith and purest charity
In statesman, priest, and humble citizen:
O, could we copy their mild virtues,... -
Scorn not the sonnet; critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honors; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch’s wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoëns soothed an exile’s grief;
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which...