And, having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage.
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low track, and look another way.
And the course of time is thus depicted in another of his sonnets:
Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before;
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity once in the main of light*
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty's brow; Feeds on the rarities of Nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
In another sonnet Shakespeare exquisitely images his own last days, as he imagines them.
That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
* The great body of light; as the main of waters.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie;
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
With the following sonnet it is supposed Shakespeare presented a dial or " table book," with blank leaves, such as was then in common use.
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
And of this book this learning may'st thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory;
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth may'st know
Time's thievish progress to eternity.
Look! What thy memory cannot contain
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
Those children nursed deliver'd from thy brain,
To take a new acquaintance of the mind.
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.
This was one of Ben Jonson's elegiac tributes to the greatest of all the great writers of the Elizabethan age:
MY BELOVED MASTER, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT US.
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.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But those ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seem'd to raise.
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin: Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, and wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further off, to make thee 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 Lily* outshine,
Or sporting Kyd,* or Marlowe's mighty line;
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honour thee, I will not seek
For names but call forth thundering Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us;
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To live 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!
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
Lives in his issue; even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turnèd, and true-filèd lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
So brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our water 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
Advanced, 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.
Who, in later life, would be unwise enough to trust in even the highest attainable prosperity?
For what are fame and name? What acres vast,
Power, wealth, a thousand simpering followers,
In sunshine jubilant, in shadow gone,
With ready nod, and pleasant-jabber'd word,
When the deep path is taken, and the vale
Grows gloomier; when the cry for aid rings out,
And no voice answers; when from crag and rock,
Strange gibbering forms, in darkness indistinct,
Mock failing weakness; and the damps grow chill
Under the starless night? Then who can help?
FREDERICK GEORGE LEE.
The troubled mind must look elsewhere for peace,
Too loud, O fame! thy trumpet is too shrill
To lull a mind to rest
Or calm a stormy breast;
Which asks a music soft and still.
"Twas not Amalek's vanquish'd cry,
Nor Israel's shout of victory,
That could in Saul the rising passion lay'Twas the soft strains of David's lyre
The evil spirit chased away.
It was not in trust of her great fame-or even of her pains and sorrows-that the chiefest female poet of our time, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, before the close of her pure and noble career on earth,
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