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By Root 19595 0

as clearly as poetic description is capable of, indicates and says that he is on the sunset side of his day of life. I cannot at this instant quote, but I am impressed that in the plays of the great poet, the instances are frequent where sorrow or despair bring his youthful characters to picture their lot with the deprivations, the ills or forebodings of age. But in no such passages is language used which is at all equivalent to that here quoted. Nowhere does he present such a travesty as to allow Juliet to describe herself in good straight terms that would befit her grandmother; and there is nothing that the much-lamenting Hamlet says which would lead an actor to play the part with the accessories of age and feebleness with which they represent Polonius.

Having now called attention to these Sonnets which give direct indications as to the age of the poet, I ask the reader to consider again those which I have quoted in relation to the age of his friend, and particularly Sonnets II. and VII. (pp. and ). If those Sonnets came from a poet of the age and infirmities which a literal reading indicates, how forceful, strong, and poetic is their appeal. But if it is to be assumed that they were written by a man of thirty or thirty-five, strong, vigorous, aggressive, fortunate, and successful, the appeal seems out of harmony, and lacks that delicate adaptation of speech to surroundings which is characteristic of the author.

* * *

I would next call attention to portions of these Sonnets which I do not present as of themselves having any clearly determinate weight as to the age of the poet, but which do have great significance from their correspondence in tone and effect with what has been already quoted. The poet repeatedly falls into meditations or fancies which seem more natural to a person on the descending than on the ascending side of life.

In Sonnets XXX. and XXXI. he says:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay, as if not paid before.

. . . . .

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,

Which I by lacking have supposed dead;

And there reigns love, and all love's loving parts,

And all those friends which I thought buried.

How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear, religious love stol'n from mine eye,

As interest of the dead, which now appear

But things removed that hidden in thee lie!

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,

Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,

Who all their parts of me to thee did give:

That due of many now is thine alone:

In Sonnet LXXI. he says:

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.

In Sonnet CXXII. he says:

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain

. . . . .

Beyond all date, even to eternity:

Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart

Have faculty by nature to subsist;

Till each to razed oblivion yield his part.

In Sonnet CXLVI. he says:

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

. . . these rebel powers that thee array,

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

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