To the silent dissolution of the sea Which misuses nothing because it values nothing;
Whereas man overvalues everything Yet, when he learns the price is pegged to his valuation,
Complains bitterly he is being ruined which, of course, he is. So kings find it odd they should have a million subjects
Yet share in the thoughts of none, and seducers Are sincerely puzzled at being unable to love What they are able to possess; so, long ago, In an open boat, I wept at giving a city,
Common warmth and touching substance, for a gift In dealing with shadows. If age, which is certainly
Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe
It will get away with anything, while age <
Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing: J
The child runs out to play in the garden, convinced '
That the furniture will go on with its thinking lesson,
Who, fifty years later, if he plays at all, Will first ask its kind permission to be excused.
When I woke into my life, a sobbing dwarf Whom giants served only as they pleased,
I was not what I seemed; ' Beyond their busy backs I made a magic I
To ride away from a father's imperfect justice, |
Take vengeance on the Romans for their grammar, Usurp the popular earth and blot out for ever
The gross insult of being a mere one among many: |
Now, Ariel, I am that I am, your late and lonely master, (
Who knows now what magic is:—the power to enchant ( That comes from disillusion. What the books can teach one (
Is that most desires end up in stinking ponds, But we have only to learn to sit still and give no orders,
To make you offer us your echo and your mirror; We have only to believe you, then you dare not lie; ;
To ask for nothing, and at once from your calm eyes, With their lucid proof of apprehension and disorder, !
All we are not stares back at what we are. For all things, I In your company, can be themselves: historic deeds .
Drop their hauteur and speak of shabby childhoods When all they longed for was to join in the gang of doubts
Who so tormented them; sullen diseases Forget their dreadful appearance and make silly jokes;
Thick-headed goodness for Oiice is not a bore. No one but you had sufficient audacity and eyesight '
To find those clearings where the shy humiliations Gambol on sunny afternoons, the waterhole to which j
The scarred rogue sorrow comes quietly in the small hours: , And no one but you is reliably informative on hell; >
As you whistle and skip past, the poisonous
Resentments scuttle over your unrevolted feet,
And even the uncontrollable vertigo, Because it can scent no shame, is unobliged to strike.
Could he but once see Nature as
In truth she is for ever, What oncer would not fell in love? Hold up your mirror, boy, to do
Your vulgar friends this favour: One peep, though, will be quite enough;
To those who are not true, A statue with no figleaf has A pornographic flavour.
Inform my hot heart straight away
Its treasure loves another, But turn to neutral topics then, Such as the pictures in this room,
Religion or the Weather; Pure scholarship in Where and When,
How Often and With Whom, Is not for Passion that must play The Jolly Elder Brother.
Be frank about our heathen foe,
For Rome will be a goner If you soft-pedal the loud beast; Describe in plain four-letter words
This dragon that's upon her: But should our beggars ask the cost,
Just whistle like the birds; Dare even Pope or Caesar know The price of faith and honour?
To-day I am free and no longer need your freedom: You, I suppose, will be off now to look for likely victims;
Crowds chasing ankles, lone men stalking glory,
Some feverish young rebel among amiable flowers
In consultation with his handsome envy, A punctual plump judge, a fly-weight hermit in a dream
Of gardens that time is for ever outside— To lead absurdly by their self-important noses.
Are you malicious by nature? I don't know. Perhaps only incapable of doing nothing or of
Being by yourself, and, for all your wry faces, May secretly be anxious and miserable without A master to need you for the work you need. Are all your tricks a test? If so, I hope you find, next time,
Someone in whom you cannot spot the weakness Through which you will corrupt him with your charm. Mine
you did
And me you have: thanks to us both, I have broken Both of the promises I made as an apprentice:— To hate nothing and to ask nothing for its love. All by myself I tempted Antonio into treason;
However that could be cleared up; both of us know That both were in the wrong, and neither need be sorry:
But Caliban remains my impervious disgrace. We did it, Ariel, between us; you found on me a wish
For absolute devotion; result—his wreck That sprawls in the weeds and will not be repaired:
My dignity discouraged by a pupil's curse, I shall go knowing and incompetent into my grave.
The extravagant children, who lately swaggered Out of the sea like gods, have, I think, been soundly hunted
By their own devils into their human selves: To all, then, but me, their pardons. Alonso's heaviness
Is lost; and weak Sebastian will be patient In future with his slothful conscience—after all, it pays;
Stephano is contracted to his belly, a minor But a prosperous kingdom; stale Trinculo receives,
Gratis, a whole fresh repertoire of stories, and Our younger generation its independent joy.
Their eyes are big and blue with love; its lighting
Makes even us look new: yes, to-day it all looks so easy.
Will Ferdinand be as fond of a Miranda Familiar as a stocking? Will a Miranda who is
No longer a silly lovesick little goose, When Ferdinand and his brave world are her profession,
Go into raptures over existing at all? Probably I over-estimate their difficulties;
Just the same, I am very glad I shall never Be twenty and have to go through that business again, The hours of fuss and fury, the conceit, the expense.
Sing first that green remote Cockaigne
Where whiskey-rivers run, And every gorgeous number may
Be laid by anyone; For medicine and rhetoric
Lie mouldering on shelves, While sad young dogs and stomach-aches Love no one but themselves.
Tell then of witty angels who
Come only to the beasts, Of Heirs Apparent who prefer Low dives to formal feasts; For shameless Insecurity Prays for a boot to lick, And many a sore bottom finds A sorer one to -kick.
Wind up, though, on a moral note:—
That Glory will go bang, Schoolchildren shall co-operate, And honest rogues must hang; Because our sound committee man
Has murder in his heart: But should you catch a living eye, Just wink as you depart.
Now our partnership is dissolved, I feel so peculiar: