XI
Reading edition
WHEREFORE should I mine own heart not unfold, And his true workings to the world disclose? Why self-unlocking for unseemly hold, Which me, as I show’d others, human shows? If I to Nature held her truthful glass, And on the stage life’s self did strive to set, Creating thousand shadows that should pass For very substance when men’s eyes they met; If there I imag’d love, hate, doubt, and trust, If all the pageant of the mortal heart, Might not one say: ‘This man within him must Have learn’d from Nature what he shap’d in art’? All passions’ depths he only can reveal Who doth them all within him living feel.
