Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VII. Descriptive: Narrative. 1904. | | | | Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great Writers | | An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare | | John Milton (1608–1674) |
| | | WHAT needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones, | |
| The labor of an age in pilèd stones? | |
| Or that his hallowed relics should be hid | |
| Under a star-y-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-endeavoring 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 sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, | 15 |
| That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. | | | | |
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