cannot apparently realise the fact that they are properties of which a thoughtful poet's use should be as temperate and occasional as Shakespeare's: but the graveyard meditations of Hamlet, perfect in dramatic tact and instinct, seem cool and common and shallow in sentiment when set beside the intensity of inspiration which animates the fitful and impetuous music of such passages as these:
Here's an eye
Able to tempt a great man—to serve God;
A pretty hanging lip, that has forgot now to dissemble.
Methinks this mouth should make a swearer tremble,
A drunkard clasp his teeth, and not undo 'em
To suffer wet damnation to run through 'em.
Here's a cheek keeps her colour let the wind go whistle;
Spout, rain, we fear thee not: be hot or cold,
All's one with us; and is not he absurd,
Whose fortunes are upon their faces set
That fear no other God but wind and wet?
Hippolito. Brother, y'ave spoke that right;
Is this the face that living shone so bright?
Vindice. The very same.
And now methinks I could e'en chide myself
For doting on her beauty, though her death
Shall be revenged after no common action.
Does the silk-worm expend her yellow labours
For thee? for thee does she undo herself?
Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships
For the poor benefit of a bewitching minute?[1]
- ↑ This is not, I take it, one of the poet's irregular though not unmusical lines; the five short unemphatic syllables, rapidly run
