Now I shall spy on beauty as
none has
Spied on it yet. Now I shall
cry out as
None has cried out. Now I shall try what none
Has tried. Now I
shall do what none has done.
.............................
[...] Now I shall speak of evil and
despair/ As none has
spoken...
[...] Now I
shall speak...
[...]Now I shall speak of evil as none has/ Spoken before..."
Shade's lines, for
all their discipline, are unlike the couple of flowing lines
from Shakespeare, which came to my mind ( as they often do) when
I stumble into his poem. For example:... "Then can I grieve at grievances foregone."...
After all,
Shade cannot stop and stress "none" in the first verse
and he goes on, to recover himself in the
next, and then again and
again.
He spies
and cries and tries until he will achieve something "none
has done." He may
surpass his antecessors when he "speaks of evil" but, for all his
accomplishments, Shade doesn't..."sing!"
Does he
refrain from singing by any special design or modesty, content to rest
in WS's "pale
fire"*?
In the
play "Midsummer Night's
Dream," there's Titania and her
powerful blessing: "O, sing, as none before thee ever sung, /As never mortal after
thee shall sing !" and Oberon: "O sing, as none before thee ever sung,
/As never mortal after thee shall sing ! [...] Let thy renown survive
[...]And envy, say, " Would I had Shakespeare been !"
Shade's "flowerlets," in Canto Three, make
an appearance (connected to a hope for immortality) when Puck
describes the approaching night ( glow-worms, their pale
fire dimmed in Hamlet, disappear by sunrise **): "The Glow-worm now lights up her em'rald lamp
;/ Bright crystal dews fill every flow'ret's cup[...] Now shall I lure some
wand'rer from his way ?" and Puck, too, indicates his impish plans.
There must be thousands of lines in Shakespeare,
and in other poets, starting with "Now I shall...." but these
were the ones that (puckishly?) haunted me.
..........................................................................................................................