"Old Chaucer, like the morning star, To us discovers day from far; His light those mists and clouds dissolved; Which our dark nation long involved: But he descending to the shades, Darkness again the age invades. Next, like Aurora, Spenser rose, Whose purple blush the day foreshows; The other three, with his own fires, Phoebus, the poets’ god, inspires; By Shakespeare’s, Jonson’s, Fletcher’s lines, Our stage’s lustre Rome’s outshines: These poets near our princes sleep, And in one grave their mansion keep."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
John Denham, "On Mr. Abraham Cowley’s Death and Burial among the Ancient Poets" (1671)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/English_poetry
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English poetry
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