Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
E'en so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now,

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun staineth."

LIV.

"O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye,

As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly

When summer's breath their masked buds discloses :
But, for their virtue only is their shew,

They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:

And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,

When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth."

In reading through the sonnets of Shakespeare, we cannot help being struck repeatedly with the sense which he appears to have had of his own immortality. There is no vaunting in this. It is merely a confidence in his own surpassing intellect, which seems to shine through all the mists of sorrow and evil fortune which surrounded him, and to cheer him on his way.

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme,"

he says, in Sonnet 55; and again, in the 81st and others, he speaks to the same effect. The next which we shall extract will be the 68th.

"Thus is his cheek the map of days out-worn,
When beauty liv'd and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were borne,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;

Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head;
Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay;
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, itself, and true,
Making no summer of another's green,
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new;
And him as for a map doth nature store,

To shew false art what beauty was of yore."

The divine humanity which shines through the following (the 71st) Sonnet was worthy even of Shakespeare himself. It fixes us his lovers and admirers more than either Hamlet or Lear. How delightful is it to be thus admitted to the innermost recesses of the great poet's mind. He was undoubtedly one of the best as well as wisest of men.

LXXI.

"No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if
you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love e'en with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone."

The next which we shall select has great pathos.

XC.

“ Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,

And do not drop in for an after-loss :

Ah! do not, when my heart hath scap'd this sorrow,

Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe;

Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,

To linger out a purpos'd overthrow.

If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come; so shall I taste

At first the very worst of Fortune's might." &c.

We hope that we shall not fatigue our readers by adding a few more specimens from this store. Our object is, if possible, to enrich our pages with all that is best in the poems of Shakespeare. They are worthy of study. If they appear harsh or quaint to the reader at the first glance, let him be assured, that they contain high poetry and striking sense. He will like them better on a second reading, we think, and better still on a third. If, after all, he shall dislike them, the fault will be-(we must be candid, where Shakespeare is concerned)-in him-ay, even in her, though it be a lady.

We are exceedingly disposed to quote the 94th Sonnet, if it be only for the sake of two beautiful lines—

"The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die."

But we must pass on, at once, to the 98th and the 102nd, which we cannot leave behind us. They are as follows.

XCVIII.

"From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,

Nor praise the deep vermillion in the rose ;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet, seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play."

CII.

"My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandis'd, whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets, grown common, lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometimes hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song."

CXVI.

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove :
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd."

We will now enable the reader to draw his own comparisons between Shakespeare and some others of our famous Sonneteers. As poets and as profound writers, not even Milton can be placed by his side, and the others are far apart; but as writers of the Sonnet, they may, with less hazard, be brought into competition with him We will begin with a Sonnet of Drummond.

66

Alexis, here she stay'd, among these pines,

Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair:

Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,

More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines;

Here sat she by these musked eglantines;

The happy flowers seem yet the print to bear:
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugared lines,

To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend an ear.
She here me first perceived, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face :
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,

Here first I got a pledge of promised grace;
But ah! what serves to have been made happy so,
Sith passed pleasures double but new woe!"

The next is one of Sir Philip Sidney. We transcribe it almost at random from the Astrophel and Stella.

LXIV.

"No more, my dear, no more these counsels try,
Oh! give my passions leave to run their race :
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace,
Let folks o'ercharg'd with brain against me cry:
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye,
Let me no step but of lost labour trace:
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case,
But do not will me from my love to fly.-
I do not envy Aristotle's wit,

Nor do aspire to Cæsar's bleeding fame,
Nor aught do care though some above me sit,
Nor hope nor wish another course to frame,
But that which once may win thy cruel heart:
Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art."

The reader may take a Sonnet, said to have been written by Sir Walter Raleigh. It is occasionally prefixed to editions of the Faerie Queen of Spenser, and is entitled a

"Vision upon the conceipt of
The Faerie Queen.

Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay
Within that temple, where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn, and passing by that way
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair love, and fairer virtue kept.
All suddenly I saw the Faërie Queen:

At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept ;
And from thenceforth those graces were not seen,
For they this queen attended, in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse.
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heav'ns did pierce,
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And curst th' access of that celestial thief."

We now come to Milton. There is a high tone of dignity