SONNETS
of
SHAKESPEARE’S
GHOST
SONNETS
of
SHAKESPEARE’S
GHOST
The Words procured by Gregory Thornton
The Ornaments made by Willem Blaeu
Never before Imprinted
At Sydney
By Angus & Robertson, and are to be solde
by all booksellers
1920
TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER
OF THESE INSUING SONNETS
F.M.
ALL HAPPINESSE
The Spirit of William Shakespeare,
sore vexed of them who say that in his
Sonnets he writ not from the truth of
his heart but from the toyings of his
brain, and that he devised but a feigned
object to fit a feigned affection, herein
maketh answer, renewing as best a
shadow may that rhyme wherein he
was more excellent in the
living body
I
THE wise world saith I not unlock’d my heart
When I of thee and thy dear love did write,
And would each word of mine to false convert,
Doing my simple sense a double spite.
It saith thou wert but shadow born of nought,
But vain creation of an apish rhyme,
While, Fashion’s fool, my strain’d invention sought
To better them who best did please the time.
But wherefore say they so, and do dear wrong
To thee, whose worth was my sole argument,
To me, whose verse ’twas truth alone made strong
By that the breast must feel, not brain invent?
They who this doubt never such beauty knew,
Nor what to poet love alone can do.
II
THEY say a man ne’er bore such love to man,
Or, if he did, ’twere but a cause for shame;
But, speaking so, they their own measure scan,
And blot their censure with self-blaming blame.
For, thou being Beauty’s best, the best of me
Worshipp’d but Beauty’s self and Beauty’s worth;
My fire and air, my spirit, adorèd thee
Unmix’d with gross compounding of my earth.
And thou wert best of Truth, the first in grace
Of all rich gems in Virtue’s carcanet;