Ariel’s Song

Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d
The wild waves whist,[388-99]
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.

Hark, hark! Burden dispersedly.
The watch-dogs bark: Bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear; Bow-wow.
The strain of strutting chanticleer. Cock-a-diddle-dow.

Ferd. Where should this music be? i’ the air, or th’ earth?
It sounds no more: and, sure, it waits upon
Some god o’ the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the King my father’s wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion[389-100]
With its sweet air: thence I have follow’d it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But ’tis gone.
No, it begins again.

Ariel sings.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change[389-101]
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Burden. Ding-Dong.

Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-Dong, bell.

Ferd. The ditty does remember my drown’d father.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes.[389-102] I hear it now above me.

Pros. The fringèd curtains of thine eyes advance,[389-103]
And say what thou see’st yond.