ON SHAKESPEARE
(1630)
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,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
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.