“Upon the Lines and Life of the famous Scenick Poet, Master William Shakespeare.”
Those hands, which you so clapt, go now, and wring
You Britain’s brave; for done are Shakespeare’s days:
His days are done, that made the dainty Plays,
Which make the Globe of heav’n and earth to ring.
Dried is that vein, dried is the Thespian Spring,
Turn’d all to tears, and Phœbus clouds his rays:
That corpse, that coffin now bestick those bayes,
Which crown’d him Poet first, then Poet’s King.
If Tragedies might any Prologue have,