“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?”
he cries, and he then proceeds to reproach the mistress of Tragedy and Comedy for her “neglect of truth in beauty dyed,” and says—
“Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so; for ’t lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
Then do thy office, Muse, I teach thee how,
To make him seem long hence as he shows now.
It is, however, perhaps in Sonnet LV that Shakespeare gives to this idea its fullest expression. To imagine that the “powerful rhyme” of the second line refers to the sonnet itself was entirely to mistake Shakespeare's meaning. It seemed to me that
