Painting thy outward walls so costly gay ? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.1
[Passages in Shakespeare's plays cannot, of course, be regarded with certainty as the expression of the poet's own sympathies and reflections. At the same time there are some pronouncements by his characters on This Life and the Next which by their strong accent of sincere conviction seem to suggest that Shakespeare may be speaking in them for himself as well as for his creations. Hence the inclusion in this volume of the following well-known speeches]:
Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet runn'st towards him still. Thou art not noble ;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provokest;
yet grossly fear'st Thou art not thyself; For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
Thy death, which is no more.
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get, And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor; For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld: and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even.1
1 From Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. i.—The Duke to Claudio.
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.1
To die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.2
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
1 From Macbeth, Act v. Sc. v.-Spoken by Macbeth. 2 From Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. i.-Spoken by Claudio.
And by opposing end them? To die—to sleep— No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die—to sleep—
To sleep! perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.1
BEN JONSON. . (1572–73–1637)
T is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make man better be, Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
1 From Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. i.-Spoken by Hamlet.
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear; A lily of a day
Is fairer far, in May,
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be.1
DEATH, be not proud, though some have callèd
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do
Rest of their bones and soul's delivery!
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.2 1 From "Ode on Sir Lucius Cary."
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