Shakspere, Personal RecollectionsJoyce, John A. (John Alexander)
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Shakspere, Personal Recollections
Joyce, John A. (John Alexander)
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Fiction
The author, touched by the insanity of genius, must ever live in the mind
of the reader, and while posterity shall forget even warriors, kings and
queens, it never fails to preserve in marble, granite, bronze and song the
name and fame of great poets.
David, Solomon, Job, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Angelo, Dante and Plutarch are
deeply imbedded in the memory of mankind, and although great kingdoms,
empires and dynasties, have passed away to the rubbish heap of oblivion,
the poet, musician, painter, and sculptor still remain to thrill and
beautify life, and teach hope of immortality beyond the grave.
After gazing on the statues of abbots, Knights Templar, Knights of the
Bath, bishops, statesmen, kings and queens, many mutilated by time and
profane hands, William stood by the coffin of Edward the Confessor and
mournfully soliloquized:
_Westminster! lofty heir of Pagan Temple;
Imperial in stone; a thousand years
Crowns the record of thy inheritance,
Gilding the glory of thy ancient fame,
With imperishable deeds--
Liberty of thought and action, shall
Forever cluster about thy classic form;
While new men with new creeds, and reason,
Shall overturn the religions of to-day,
As thou hast invaded and destroyed
The Pagan, Roman rules of antiquity.
These marble hands and faces appealing
For remembrance, to animated dust
Appeal in vain, for we, whose footfalls
Only sound in marble ears, cold and listless,
Shall ourselves follow where they led, dying
Not knowing the mysterious secrets of the grave.
Here the victor and vanquished, side by side,
Sleep in dreamless rest, Kings and Queens in life,
Battling for power, all conquered by tyrant Death,
Whose universal edict, irrevocable,
Levels Prince and Peasant, in impalpable dust.
Crowns to-day, coffins to-morrow, with monuments
Mossed over, letter-cracked, undecipherable
As the mummied remains of Egyptian Kings.
Vain, vain, are all the monuments of man,
The greatest only live a little span;
We strut and shine our passing day, and then--
Depart from all the haunts of living men,
With only Hope to light us on the way
Where billions passed beneath the silent clay;
And, none have yet returned to tell us where
We'll bivouac beyond this world of care;
And these dumb mouths, with ghostly spirits near
Will not express a word into mine ear,
Or tell me when I leave this sinning sod
If I shall be transfigured with my God!_
In September, 1592, the second play of Shakspere, "Love's Labor's Lost,"
was given at the Blackfriars, to a fine audience.
He took the characters of the play from a French novel, based on an Italian
plot, and wove around the story a lot of glittering talk to please the
lords and ladies who listened to the silly gabble of their prototypes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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