Anonymous, About 1637
“An Elegie on the Death of that famous Writer and Actor, Mr. William Shakspeare.”
I dare not do thy memory that wrong,
Unto our larger griefs to give a tongue;
I’ll only sigh in earnest, and let fall
My solemn tears at thy great funeral;
For every eye that rains a show’r for thee,
Laments thy loss in a sad elegy.
Nor is it fit each humble Muse should have
Thy worth his subject, now th’ art laid in grave;
No, it’s a flight beyond the pitch of those,
Whose worthless pamphlets are not sense in prose.
Let learned Jonson sing a Dirge for thee,
And fill our Orb with mournful harmony:
But we need no remembrancer; thy fame
Shall still accompany thy honoured name
To all posterity; and make us be
Sensible of what we lost in losing thee:
Being the age’s wonder, whose smooth rhymes
Did more reform than lash the looser times.
Nature herself did her own self admire,
As oft as thou wert pleased to attire
Her in her native lustre, and confess
Thy dressing was her chiefest comliness.
How can we then forget thee, when the age
Her chiefest tutor, and the widowed stage
Her only favourite in thee hath lost,
And Nature’s self what she did brag of most?
Sleep then, rich soul of numbers, whilst poor we
Enjoy the profits of thy legacy;
And thinke it happiness enough we have
So much of thee redeemèd from the grave,
As may suffice to enlighten future times
With the bright lustre of thy matchless rhymes.
Appended to Shakespeare’s Poems. 1640. Sig. L.