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Sonnet

By Charles Kingsley

Topics: classic

Oh, thou hadst been a wife for Shakspeare's self!     No head, save some world-genius, ought to rest     Above the treasures of that perfect breast,     Or nightly draw fresh light from those keen stars     Through which thy soul awes ours:    yet thou art bound -     O waste of nature! - to a craven hound;     To shameless lust, and childish greed of pelf;     Athene to a Satyr:    was that link     Forged by The Father's hand?    Man's reason bars     The bans which God allowed. - Ay, so we think:     Forgetting, thou hadst weaker been, full blest,          Than thus made strong by suffering; and more great          In martyrdom, than throned as Caesar's mate.     Eversley, 1851.

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"Oh, thou hadst been a wife for Shakspeare's self!..."

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Author:Charles Kingsley

"Oh, thou hadst been a wife for Shakspeare's self!..." by Charles Kingsley

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Charles Kingsley

About Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) was an English novelist, historian, and poet whose poem "The Three Fishers" and children's book "The Water-Babies" are Victorian classics. He was also a social reformer and advocate for "Christian Socialism."

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