Lavished on the Dead

“That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.” – Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

Living, you are judged by worse performance 
Dead, you’re rated by your best 
Many mountains and so many rivers 
Range to make what’s deep and high 
Above all evidence Demonstration 
Flexes fearless of all flux 

Poets craft aspects individual; 
Shakespeare makes his a species 
Euripides takes every verse precept 
While Shakespeare has no heroes 

He gleans his works by diligent selection 
In the commerce of mankind 
Out of common conversation setting 
Cosmic store by human hearts 

Where agency is supernatural 
Dialogue is sublunar 
From chaos of comingling needs and wounds 
Shines full looking-glass of life 
Unavoidable concatenations  
Bring co-operations high 
And low inside the great machine to ease 
Then exhilarate the mind 

Bonefunny and so skilled in tragedy 
By craft and application 
(No pedant, who would sell his home and haul 
With him a housebrick of proof) 

My cottage may be mean and incommodious to you 
Who dwarf it in the shadow of the palaces of tyrants 
Yet could you see it glow with art and love 
It could not fail to, even for an iron heart, astonish