John Milton. (1608–1674). Complete Poems.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| On Shakespeare |
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| (1630) |
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| WHAT needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones, | |
| The labour of an age in pilèd stones? | |
| Or that his hollowed relics 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 thyself a livelong monument. | |
| For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art, | |
| Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart | 10 |
| Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book, | |
| Those Delphic lines with deep impression took; | |
| Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, | |
| Dost make us marble, with too much conceiving; | |
| And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie, | 15 |
| That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. | |
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