Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
Be call'd our mother, but our grave. Where nothing
But he who knows nothing, is once seen to smile,
Where ... the dead man's knell
Is scarce ask'd, for whom and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying, or ere they sicken.
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.—
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....
I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
.... They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course.
.... I have supp'd full with horrors.
Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.
[289]: Goethe, Wilhelm Meister.
O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fye on 't! O fye! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king....
So loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
.... And yet, within a month,
Let me not think on 't;—Frailty, thy name is woman!...
A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body....
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:—O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot, come to good;
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!
Hold, hold, my heart;
And you my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up!—Remember thee?
Ay, poor Ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past.
And thy commandment all alone shall live.
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tablet;—meet it is, I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least, I am sure, it may be so in Denmark:
So, uncle, there you are.