| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910. | | | | On Shakespear 1630 | | By John Milton (1608–1674) |
| | | WHAT needs my Shakespear for his honour’d Bones, | |
| The labour of an age in pilèd Stones, | |
| Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid | |
| Under a Stary-pointing Pyramid? | |
| Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame, | 5 |
| What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? | |
| Thou in our wonder and astonishment | |
| Hast built thy self a live-long Monument. | |
| For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art, | |
| Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart | 10 |
| Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu’d Book, | |
| Those Delphick lines with deep impression took, | |
| Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving, | |
| Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving; | |
| And so Sepulcher’d in such pomp dost lie, | 15 |
| That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die. | | | | |
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