What needs my Shakespeare for his honor’d bones,
The labor of an age in piled stones,
Or that his hallow’d relics should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

These lines come from John Milton’s early elegiac poem on Shakespeare, written in the early 1630s when Milton was a young poet establishing his own literary voice. The poem was first printed as an anonymous prefatory tribute in the Second Folio of Shakespeare’s plays (1632), a moment when Shakespeare’s posthumous reputation was being consolidated in print culture. Milton contrasts monumental burial practices—pyramids, stone tombs, and relics—with the enduring “monument” of Shakespeare’s works, suggesting that literary fame outlasts physical memorials. The tribute also participates in a broader Renaissance and early modern tradition of praising poets as immortal through their writings.

Milton argues that Shakespeare requires no grand tomb or architectural memorial because his true monument is his poetry, which preserves him more powerfully than “piled stones.” The rhetorical questions dismiss material commemoration as a “weak witness” compared to the living force of Shakespeare’s art in readers’ minds. Calling Shakespeare the “son of memory” and “heir of fame,” Milton frames literary achievement as a kind of secular immortality: the works continually renew the author’s presence. The passage also subtly elevates poetry itself—its capacity to confer lasting honor—while implying that public monuments are ultimately inadequate to measure genuine greatness.