Page:Shakespeare of Stratford (1926) Yale.djvu/108

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A little further, to make thee a room.^[1]
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so^[2] my brain excuses—
I mean with great but disproportion’d muses—
For if I thought my judgment were of years,^[3]
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honor thee I would not seek
For names, but call forth thund’ring Æschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova,^[4] dead
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage: or, when thy socks^[5] were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

Triumph, my Britain! Thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time;
And all the muses still were in their prime
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun and woven so fit
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.

1. Beaumont had been buried, a few months before Shakespeare’ death, in Westminster Abbey, where Chaucer and Spenser also lay.
2. I.e. with Chaucer, Spenser, and Beaumont.
3. I.e. mature.
4. Seneca, born at Cordova.
5. Comedies.