Explore "On Shakespeare" by Alice Meynell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
WHAT needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-y-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 live-long monument.
For whilst, to 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 sepulchered in such pomp dost lie, / That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.