Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/231

 tragically prosaic and prosaically tragic dash of incurable commonplace), "be yet unbroken," and in the flaccid and futile answer which fails so signally to supply the place of the most famous and pathetic passage in all the masterpiece of Chaucer; a passage to which even Shakespeare could have added but some depth and grandeur of his own giving, since neither he nor Dante's very self nor any other among the divinest of men could have done more or better than match it for tender and pure simplicity of words more "dearly sweet and bitter" than the bitterest or the sweetest of men's tears. Then, after the duly and properly conventional engagement on the parts of Palamon and Emilia respectively to devote the anniversary "to tears" and "to honour," the deeper note returns for one grand last time, grave at once and sudden and sweet as the full choral opening of an anthem: the note which none could ever catch of Shakespeare's very voice gives out the peculiar cadence that it alone can give in the modulated instinct of a solemn change or shifting of the metrical emphasis or ictus from one to the other of two repeated words:—

That nought could buy Dear love; but loss of dear love!