Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, And the sad augurs mock their own presage: Incertainties now crown themselves assured, 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. --_Sonnet_ 107. 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 me copia fecit_. How true it is to nature, he has himself finely expressed in the instance of love in _Sonnet_ 98: From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April drest in all his 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 lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were, but 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 [Greek text, transliterated] Gonzmou men Poihtou---------- ----------ostis rhma 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, that 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._ --_Venus and Adonis_, 1. 811.