Explore "Shakespeare Himself: for the Unveiling of Mr Partridge's Statue of the Poet" by Bliss Carman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The body is no prison where we lie / Shut out from our true heritage of sun; / It is the wings wherewith the soul may fly. / Save through this flesh so scorned and spat upon, / No ray of light had reached the caverned mind, / No thrill of pleasure through the life had run, / No love of nature or of humankind, / Were it but love of self, had stirred the heart / To its first deed. Such freedom as we find, / We find but through its service, not apart. / And as an eagle's wings upbear him higher / Than Andes or Himalaya, and chart / Rivers and seas beneath; so our desire, / With more celestial members yet, may soar / Into the space of empyrean fire, / Still bodied but more richly than before.
The body is the man; what lurks behind / Through it alone unveils itself. Therefore / We are not wrong, who seek to keep in mind / The form and feature of the mighty dead. / So back of all the giving is divined / The giver, back of all things done or said / The man himself in elemental speech / Of flesh and bone and sinew uttered.