I M. S., 1632
“On worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems.”
A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear
Distant a thousand years, and represent
Them in their lively colours’ just extent.
To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates,
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie
Great heaps of ruinous mortality.
In that deep dusky dungeon to discern
A royal ghost from churls: by art to learn
The physiognomy of shades, and give
Them sudden birth, wond’ring how oft they live.
What story coldly tells, what poets feign
At second hand, and picture without brain
Senseless and soulless shows. To give a stage
(Ample and true with life) voice, action, age,
As Plato’s year and new scene of the world
Them unto us, or us to them had hurl’d.
To raise our ancient sovereigns from their herse,
Make kings his subjects, by exchanging verse
Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age
Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage:
Yet so to temper passion, that our ears
Take pleasure in their pain; and eyes in tears
Both weep and smile; fearful at plots so sad,
Then, laughing at our fear; abus’d, and glad
To be abus’d, affected with that truth
Which we perceive is false; pleas’d in that ruth
At which we start; and by elaborate play
Tortur’d and tickled; by a crablike way
Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort
Disgorging up his ravaine for our sport—
—While the Plebeian Imp, from lofty throne,
Creates and rules a world, and works upon
Mankind by secret engines; now to move
A chilling pity, then a rigorous love:
To strike up and stroke down, both joy and ire;
To steer th’ affections; and by heavenly fire
Mould us anew. Stol’n from ourselves—
This, and much more which cannot be express’d,
But by himself, his tongue and his own breast,
Was Shakespeare’s freehold, which his cunning brain
Improv’d by favour of the ninefold train.
The buskin’d Muse, the Comic Queen, the grand
And louder tone of Clio; nimble hand,
And nimbler foot of the melodious pair,
The silver voiced Lady; the most fair
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose praise the heavenly body chants.
These jointly woo’d him, envying one another
(Obey’d by all as spouse, but lov’d as brother),
And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,
Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white,
The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright;
Branch’d and embroider’d like the painted Spring,
Each leaf match’d with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silk; there run
Italian works whose thread the Sisters spun;
And there did sing, or seem to sing, the choice
Birds of a foreign note and various voice.
Here hangs a mossy rock; there plays a fair
But chiding fountain purled; not the air,
Nor clouds nor thunder, but were living drawn,
Not out of common tiffany or lawn,
But fine materials, which the Muses know,
And only know the countries where they grow.
Now, when they could no longer him enjoy
In mortal garments pent, death may destroy,
They say, his body, but his verse shall live;
And more than nature takes, our hands shall give.
In a less volume, but more strongly bound,
Shakespeare shall breath and speak, with laurel crown’d
Which never fades. Fed with Ambrosian meat,
In a well-lined vesture rich and neat.
So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it;
For time shall never stain, nor envy tear it.
The friendly admirer of his Endowments,
I. M. S.
Prefixed to the Second Folio Edition of
Shakespeare’s Works. 1632.
Conjectures as to the authorship of this poem have been numerous. Coleridge in his Lectures on Shakespeare says: “This poem is subscribed I. M. S., meaning, as some have explained, the initials “John Milton, Student”: the internal evidence seems to us decisive; for there was, I think, no other man, of that particular day, capable of writing anything so characteristic of Shakespeare, so justly thought, and so happily expressed.”