Project Gutenberg's Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost, by Gregory Thornton

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Title: Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost

Author: Gregory Thornton

Illustrator: Willem Blaeu

Release Date: July 6, 2008 [EBook #25979]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE'S GHOST ***

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Sonnets
of
Shakespeare's
Ghost

The Words procured by GREGORY THORNTON
The Ornaments made by WILLEM BLAEU

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Never before Imprinted

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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 mea