Was it the proud full sail of his
great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious
you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain
inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they
grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to
write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me
dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by
night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with
intelligence
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance fill'd up
his line,
Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled
mine.
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Shakespeare's Sonnets:
