Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt: the strong-bas’d promontory
Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck’d up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers; oped and let them forth
By my so potent art.”
Shakespeare borrowed this speech from Medea’s speech in Ovid, which he knew in the translation of Arthur Golding; and really Shakespeare seems almost to have held the book in his hand while penning Prospero’s speech. The following is from Golding’s translation, published in 1567:
“Ye Ayres and windes; ye Elves of Hilles and Brooks, of Woods alone,
Of standing Lakes and of the Night approach ye every chone.