Long Is The Way And

[rhyme Is] But The Invention Of A Barbarous Age, To Set Off Wretched Matter And Lame Meter; ... Not Without Cause Therefore Some Both Italian And Spanish Poets Of Prime Note Have Rejected Rhyme, ... As Have Also Long Since Our Best English Tragedies, As... Trivial And Of No True Musical Delight; Which [truly] Consists Only In Apt Numbers, Fit Quantity Of Syllables, And The Sense Variously Drawn Out From One Verse Into Another, Not In The Jingling Sound Of Like Endings, A Fault Avoided By The Learned Ancients Both In Poetry And All Good Oratory.

What Needs My Shakespeare For His Honour'd Bones,- The Labour Of An Age In Piled Stones? Or That His Hallow'd Relics Should Be Hid Under A Star-y-pointing Pyramid? Dear Son Of Memory, Great Heir Of Fame, What Need'st Thou Such Weak Witness Of Thy Name?

The Leaf Was Darkish, And Had Prickles On It, But In Another Country, As He Said, Bore A Bright Golden Flow'r, But Not In This Soil; Unknown, And Like Esteem'd, And The Dull Swain Treads On It Daily With His Clouted Shoon.

Thus I Set My Printless Feet O'er The Cowslip's Velvet Head, That Bends Not As I Tread.

Freely They Stood Who Stood, And Fell Who Fell.