Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil: Happy 400th, John Milton!

I will celebrate by (strangely but appropriately) reproducing a short sonnet Milton composed about Shakespeare, because Milton most clearly reveals his own anxieties regarding fame, legacy, and the endurance of art when talking about OTHER writers. He wouldn’t be disappointed: it’s been 400 years and scrawny students(ahem yours truly) are still applying to graduate school to study his work.

On Shakespeare
John Milton

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.

~ by genghiskuhn on December 9, 2008.