ARIEL’S SONG.
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d
The wild waves whist.
Foot it featly here and there,
And sweet sprites bear
The burden. Hark, hark!
Burden dispersedly. Bow-wow.
The watch dogs bark.
[Burden dispersedly.] Bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry cock-a-diddle-dow.
FERDINAND.
Where should this music be? i’ th’ air or th’ earth?
It sounds no more; and sure it waits upon
Some god o’ th’ island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the King my father’s wrack,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
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
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Burden: Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them: ding-dong, bell.
FERDINAND.
The ditty does remember my drown’d father.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes:—I hear it now above me.
PROSPERO.
The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,
And say what thou seest yond.
MIRANDA.
What is’t? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form. But ’tis a spirit.
PROSPERO.
No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses
As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest
Was in the wrack; and, but he’s something stain’d
With grief,—that’s beauty’s canker,—thou mightst call him
A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows
And strays about to find ’em.
MIRANDA.
I might call him
A thing divine; for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.
PROSPERO.
[Aside.] It goes on, I see,
As my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit! I’ll free thee
Within two days for this.