Finer poetry than this I can hardly find in English to quote for you. But fine as it is, will you not observe the matter-of-factness (call it healthy, if you will, and I shall not gainsay you) beneath Shakespeare's noble language? It says divinely what it has to say; and what it has to say is full of solemn thought. But, for better or worse (or, rather, without question of better or worse), Blake's imagination is moving on a different plane. We may think it an uncomfortably superhuman plane; but let us note the difference, and note further that this plane was habitual with Blake. Now because of his immense powers we are accustomed to think of Shakespeare as almost superhuman: we pay that tribute to his genius, his strength, and the enormous impression they produce on us. But a single couplet of Blake's will carry more of this uncanny superhuman imagination than the whole five acts of _Hamlet_. So great is Shakespeare, that he tempts us to think him capable of any flight of wing; but set down a line or two of Blake's-- "A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage . . . A skylark wounded on the wing Doth make a cherub cease to sing." --And, simple as the thought is, at once you feel it to lie outside the range of Shakespeare's philosophy. Shakespeare's men are fine, brave, companionable fellows, full of passionate love, jealousy, ambition; of humour, gravity, strength of mind; of laughter and rage, of the joy and stress of living. But self-sacrifice scarcely enters into their notion of the scheme of things, and they are by no means men to go to death for an idea. We remember what figure Shakespeare made of Sir John Oldcastle, and I wish we could forget what figure he made of Joan of Arc. Within the bounds of his philosophy--the philosophy, gloriously stated, of ordinary brave, full-blooded men-- he is a great encourager of virtue; and so such lines as-- "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action . . ." Are thoroughly Shakespearean, while such lines as-- "A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage . . ." Are as little Shakespearean in thought as in phrasing. He can tell us that: "We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." He can muse on that sleep to come:-- "To die, to sleep; To sleep; perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause."