What needs my
Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd
reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing
Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self
a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th'shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those
Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us
Marble1 with too much conceaving;
And so
Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
This was
John Milton's first published poem. It was released anonymously in
Shakespeare's second
folio of plays, under the title "An
Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W.SHAKESPEARE," in
1632. The title "On Shakespear,"
sans the trailing "e," is taken from the
1645 edition of the poem; the printings of
1632 and
1640 spell it the modern way, "Shakespeare."
1 - Smiliar imagery, of the reader changing into a marble statue, appears in Milton's Il Penseroso. It may be referring to the myth of Niobe, who bragged that her children were superior to Leto's children, Diana and Apollo, and was turned to stone as a punishment. Similar allusions are in Shakespeare's own Sonnet 55.