I passed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger soul, Was my great father-in law, renowned Warwick; Who cried aloud,- What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence? And so he vanished: Then came wandering by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud,- Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury ;- Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments !- With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends Environed me, and howled in mine ears Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise, I trembling waked, and, for a season after, Could not believe but that I was in hell; Such terrible impression made my dream. Brak. No marvel, lord, that it affrighted you; I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.
Clar. O, Brackenbury, I have done those things,That now give evidence against my soul,—
For Edward's sake; and, see, how he requites me! O God! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee, But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds, Yet execute thy wrath on me alone:
O, spare my guiltless wife, and my poor children!- I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me;
My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.
Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question :- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?-To die;-to sleep ;- No more;—and, by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,-'t is a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die;-to sleep ;-
To sleep! perchance, to dream;-Ay, there's the rub;— For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: There's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin! who would fardels bear, Το groan and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death, - The undiscovered country, from whose bourne No traveller returns,-puzzles the will; And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of!
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklyed o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
EXTRACTS FROM PARADISE LOST.
THUS Satan, talking to his nearest mate, With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream: Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays:
So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay, Chained on the burning lake.
He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesolè, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand, He walked with, to support uneasy steps Over the burning marl, not like those steps On heaven's azure: and the torrid clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire: Nathless he so endured, till on the beach Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High over-arched, imbower; or scattered sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot wheels: so thick bestrown, Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change. He called so loud, that all the hollow deep Of hell resounded!
They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung
Upon the wing; as when men wont to watch On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel; Yet to their general's voice they soon obeyed; Innumerable. As when the potent rod Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile: So numberless were those bad angels seen, Hovering on wing under the cope of hell, 'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires; Till, as a signal given, the up-lifted spear Of their great sultan waving to direct Their course, in even balance down they light On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain; A multitude, like which the populous north Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons Came like a deluge on the south, and spread Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
All these and more came flocking; but with looks Downcast and damp; yet such wherein appeared Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their chief Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost In loss itself; which on his countenance cast Like doubtful hue: but he, his wonted pride Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears. Then straight commands, that at the warlike sound
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