What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labour of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a livelong monument. For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavouring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book, Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving; And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. J. MILTON. UNDER MR. MILTON'S PICTURE BEFORE HIS 'PARADISE LOST' Three Poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last: The force of Nature could no farther go; To make a third she joined the former two. J. DRYDEN. UPON MY BROTHER'S BOOK CALLED 'THE GROUNDS, LABOUR AND REWARD OF FAITH' This lamp filled up, and fired by that blest spirit, Spent his last oil in this pure heavenly flame; Laying the grounds, walls, roof of faith: this frame With life he ends; and now doth there inherit What here he built, crowned with his laurel merit: Whose palms and triumphs once he loudly rang, There now enjoys what here he sweetly sang. This is his monument, on which he drew His spirit's image, that can never die; But breathes in these live words, and speaks to the eye; In these his winding-sheets he dead doth shew To buried souls the way to live anew, And in his grave more powerfully now preacheth. Who will not learn, when that a dead man teacheth? P. FLETCHER. UPON THE BOOK AND PICTURE OF THE SERAPHICAL SAINT TERESA