God in Shakspeare Author:Charles Downing Subtitle: The Course of the Poet's Spiritual Life With His Reflections Thereon and His Resultant Conception of His World-Personality, Inductively Established From His Text General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1901 Original Publisher: Greening co. Subjects: Christianity in literature Religion in literature God... more » in literature Drama / Shakespeare Literary Criticism / Shakespeare Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II. THE FRIENDSHIP : ITS PRELIMINARY TRIAL. In 1595 this profound man of the people had not yet escaped from the enchantments of the dark lady. He still listens sadly to her music. He is still her shadow. " The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." Wordsworth. He feels that his own life is past, his belief in, and estimation of it decayed, the freshness and glow of fancy fading before experience and thought, human life serious, himself in it but not of it, a spirit to move and sway, a wageless servant of a nameless power. He is " oppressed with melancholy." 73. " That time of year thou may's! in me behold, When yellow leaves or none or few do hang Upon those bougli. s that shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang : In me thou seest the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by-and-by black night doth take away, Death's second self that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by." But Pembroke has yet to live. The perfection of humanity, he ...« less