Explore "Sonnet" by Charles Kingsley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Oh, thou hadst been a wife for Shakspeare's self! / No head, save some world-genius, ought to rest / Above the treasures of that perfect breast, / Or nightly draw fresh light from those keen stars / Through which thy soul awes ours: yet thou art bound -- / O waste of nature! -- to a craven hound; / To shameless lust, and childish greed of pelf; / Athene to a Satyr: was that link / Forged by The Father's hand? Man's reason bars / The bans which God allowed. -- Ay, so we think: / Forgetting, thou hadst weaker been, full blest, / Than thus made strong by suffering; and more great / In martyrdom, than throned as Caesar's mate.
Eversley, 1851.