POEM OF THE DAY

Remembering The Bard Of Avon, "Our myriad-minded Shakespeare" as Coleridge called him and who is believed to be born and died on this day (b.23rd April1564-----d.23 April 1616.). It is World Book Day today also and Shakespeare's famous quote in ''The Tempest": "me poor man, my library was dukedom large enough" bears timeliness today and speaks of the immense value of books in our lives. Matthew Arnold rightly said of him, "Others abide our question thou art free."

On Shakespeare.(1630)

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What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,

The labor of an age in pilèd stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid   

Under a star-ypointing 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 live-long monument.

For whilst to th’ 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 sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

~~~~~ JOHN MILTON

By courtesy of Mr Vijay K Mishra, Facebook