PERIOD III.

POETS OF THE

XVIITH CENTURY.

MILTON TO OLDHAM.

MILTON.

An Epitaph on the admirable dramatic poet, W. Shakespeare.

[1632

WHAT needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd

bones

The labour of an age in pilèd stones,

Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak memory of thy

name?

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a live-long monument:
For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring art
Thy easy numbers flow; and that each heart
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,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

From Il Penseroso. [1632-1638

OR call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,

Chaucer.

Jonson.

Shakespeare.

Of Camball and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,

That own'd the virtuous ring and glass;
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar kings did ride;
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of turneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.

From L'Allegro.

THEN to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,

[1632-1638

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

On worthy Master Shakespeare and
his Poems.

A MIND reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear
Distant a thousand years, and represent
Them in their lively colours, just extent,
To out-run hasty Time, retrieve the Fates,
Roll back the heavens, blow up the iron gates
Of Death and Lethe, where confused lie
Great heaps of ruinous mortality;

In that deep dusky dungeon to discern