The Tempest is a finer play than the Midsummer Night’s Dream, which has sometimes been compared with it; but it is not so fine a poem. There are a greater number of beautiful passages in the latter. Two of the most striking in the Tempest are spoken by Prospero. The one is that admirable one when the vision which he has conjured up disappears, beginning ‘The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,’ etc., which has been so often quoted, that every school-boy knows it by heart; the other is that which Prospero makes in abjuring his art.
‘Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that
By moon-shine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew, by whose aid
(Weak masters tho’ ye be) I have be-dimm’d