From Chaucer to Tennyson Part 17

THE SLEEP OF KINGS.

[From _Henry IV_.--Part II.]

How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopy of costly state, And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?

O thou dull G.o.d, why liest thou with the vile, In loathsome beds; and leav'st the kingly couch, A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell?

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge; And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them With deaf'ning clamors in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?

Can'st thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude; And, in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king? Then, happy low-lie-down!

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

FALSTAFF AND BARDOLPH.

[From _Henry IV_.--Part I.]

_Falstaff_. Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? do I not bate? do I not dwindle?

Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown; I am wither'd like an old apple-John.

Well, I'll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking; I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent.

An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer's horse: the inside of a church! Company, villainous company hath been the spoil of me:

_Bardolph_. Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long.

_Fal_. Why, there it is. Come, sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. I was as virtuously given, as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough: swore little; diced, not above seven times a week; paid money that I borrowed, three or four times; lived well, and in good compa.s.s: and now I live out of all order, out of all compa.s.s.

_Bard_. Why you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compa.s.s; out of all reasonable compa.s.s, Sir John.

_Fal_. Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life: Thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the p.o.o.p--but 'tis in the nose of thee; thou art the knight of the burning lamp.

_Bard_. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.

_Fal_ No, I'll be sworn; I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death's head or a _memento mori_: I never see thy face but I think upon h.e.l.l-fire, and Dives that lived in purple; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert anyway given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be: By this fire: but thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light of thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou runn'st up Gad's Hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an _ignis fatuus_, or a ball of wildfire, there's no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern; but the sack that thou hast drunk me, would have bought me lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler's in Europe. I have maintained that Salamander of yours with fire, any time this two and thirty years; Heaven reward me for it!

THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN.

[From _As You Like It_.]

_Jacques_. All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms; Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school: and then, the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow: Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like a pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth: And then the justice, In fair round belly, with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans[97] teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY.

To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis n.o.bler 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--'tis 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 disprized 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 take With a bare bodkin?[98] Who would fardels[99] bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 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 sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn away And lose the name of action.

[Footnote 97: Without.]

DETACHED Pa.s.sAGES FROM THE PLAYS.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Our revels now are ended: these our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself-- Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack[100] behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded[101] with a sleep.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible!

O who can hold a fire in his hand, By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or cloy the hungry edge of appet.i.te By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow, By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?

O no! the apprehension of the good Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy, She sat, like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief.

Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth: But either it was different in blood; Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it; Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied[102] night, That, in a spleen,[103] unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, Behold!

The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.

[Footnote 98: Small sword.]

[Footnote 99: Burdens.]

[Footnote 100: Cloud.]

[Footnote 101: Encompa.s.sed.]

[Footnote 102: Black.]

[Footnote 103: Caprice, whim.]

FRANCIS BACON.

OF DEATH.

[From the Essays.]

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and pa.s.sage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superst.i.tion. You shall read in some of the friars'

books of mortification, that a man should think with himself what the pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed or tortured; and thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when many times death pa.s.seth with less pain than the torture of a limb; for the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake only as a philosopher and natural man, it was well said, _Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa._[104] Groans and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible. It is worthy the observing, that there is no pa.s.sion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death, and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupateth[105] it. It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant perhaps the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood: who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours of death; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is _Nunc dimittis_[106] when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy: _Extinctus amabitur idem_.[107]

[Footnote 104: The shows of death terrify more than death itself.]

[Footnote 105: Antic.i.p.ates.]

[Footnote 106: Now thou dismissest us.]

[Footnote 107: The same man will be loved when dead.]