WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 3

VPON LINES AND LIFE OF THE FANOUS SCENICKE POTT

MASTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Those hands, which you so clapt, go now, and wring

You Bratana braue; for done are Shakespeares dayes:

Mis dayes are done, that made the dainty Playes,

Which made the Globe of heau'n and earth to ring.

Dry'de is that veine, dry'd is the Thespian Spring,

Tum'd all to teares, and Phabus clouds his rayos

That corp's, that coffin now besticke those bayes,

Which crown'd him Pout first, then Poets King.

If Tragedies might any Prologue haue,

All those he made, would scarse make one to this:

Where Fame, now that he gone is to the graue

(Deaths publique tyring-house) the Nuncius is.

For though his line of life went soone about,

The life yer of his lines shall neuer out.

HVGH HOLLAND.

TO THE MEMORIE OF THE DECEASED AUTHOUR

MAISTER W. SHAKESPEARE.

SHAK

HAKE-SPEARE, at length thy pious fellowes gius

The world thy Workes : thy Workes, by which, out-line

Thy Tombe, thy name must : when that stone is rent,

And Time dissolues thy Stratford Moniment,

Here we aliue shall view thee still. This Booke,

When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke

Fresh to all Ages: when Posteritie

Shall loath what's new, thinke all is prodegie

That is not Shake-speares ; eu'ry Line, each Verse

Here shall reuiue, redeeme thee from thy Herse.

Nor Fire, nor cankring Age, as Naso said,

Of his, thy wit-fraught Booke shall once inuade.

Nor shall I e're beleeue, or thinke thee dead

(Though mist) vntill our bankrout Stage be sped

(Impossible) with some new straine tout-do

Passions of Juliet, and her Romeo ;

Or till I heare a Scene more nobly take,

Then when thy half-Sword parlying Romans spake.

Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest

Shall with more fire, more feeling be exprest,

Be sure, our Shake-speare, thou canst neuer dye,

But crown'd with Lawrell, liue eternally.