stars and sunbeams

Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday!

Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,

Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil’d searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess’d at.—Better so!

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

—Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "Shakespeare," first published in 1849. I sort of hate the rhyme in the last couplet of this sonnet, and also it’s a little weird that it’s a sonnet about Shakespeare but not actually a Shakespearean sonnet? YOU DO YOU, MATTHEW ARNOLD.