The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d, And Peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes. And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants’ crests, and tombs of brass are spent.” As of higher worth, so doubtless still more characteristic of poetic genius does the imagery become, when it moulds and colours itself to the circumstances, passion, or character, present and foremost in the mind. For unrivalled instances of this excellence, the reader’s own memory will refer him to the LEAR, OTHELLO, in short to which not of the “great, ever living, dead man’s” dramatic works? Inopem em copia fecit. How true it is to nature, he has himself finely expressed in the instance of love in his 98th Sonnet. From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April drest in all its trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing; That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make me any summer’s story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them, where they grew Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were, tho’ sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow, I with these did play!” Scarcely less sure, or if a less valuable, not less indispensable mark Gonimon men poiaetou------ ------hostis rhaema gennaion lakoi, will the imagery supply, when, with more than the power of the painter, the poet gives us the liveliest image of succession with the feeling of simultaneousness:-- With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace Of those fair arms, which bound him to her breast, And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;-- * * * * * * Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky, So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye.