On Shakespeare

WHAT needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,

The labour of an age in pilèd stones?

Or that his hollowed relics should be hid

Under a stary-pointing 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.