97 



" The age to come would say this poet lies — 

 Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces ; 

 So should my papers, yellowed with their age, 

 Be scorned like old men, of less truth than tongue, 

 And your true rights be termed a poet's rage, 

 Or stretched metre of an antique song. 

 But were some child of yours alive that time, 

 You should live twice, in it, and in my rhyme." 



In the last couplet of the 18th stanza — 



" So long as men can hreathe, as eye can see, 

 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." 

 and in the 19th — 



" Yet do thy worst old Time, despite thy wrong ; 

 My love shall in my verse ever live young." 

 In the 55th, absorbing the whole stanza — 

 "Not marble, not the gilded monuments 

 Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme; 

 But you shall shine more bright in these contents 

 Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time. 

 When wasteful war shall statues overturn. 

 And broils root out the work of masonry ; 

 Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn, 

 The living record of your memory. 

 'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity 

 Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room, 

 Even in the eyes of all posterity 

 That wear this world out to the ending doom. 

 So till tlie judgment, that yourself arise — 

 You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes." 



This may be fanciful, but it seems to me very like sincere 

 belief. Not to multiply examples by further quotation, 

 it appears to me that any person who can, after their 

 perusal, declare that the poet had no legitimate or 

 natural craving for immortality, must be a bold man. 

 The occasional humility they disclose, the doubts, the 

 quick sense, of wrong, of human injustice, and of the pre- 

 valence of evil, so far from weighing agahist this testi- 

 mony, authenticate it. He has an undoubted faith in 



