Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (90 page)
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Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
Lear and the Fool on the Heath (King Lear)
Act III. Scene II
.
Another Part of the Heath.
Storm still.
Enter
LEAR
and
Fool.
Lear.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
5
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once
10
That make ingrateful man!
Fool.
O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters’ blessing; here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.
Lear.
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
15
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription: then, let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
20
That have with two pernicious daughters join’d
Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! ’tis foul.
Fool.
He that has a house to put his head in has a good head-piece.
The cod-piece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many.
The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make,
Shall of a corn cry woe,
And turn his sleep to wake.
For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.
25
Enter
KENT.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Act I. Scene I
.
London. A Street.
Enter
GLOUCESTER
Glo.
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
5
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings;
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
10
Grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, — instead of mounting barbed steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, —
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
15
But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
20
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them;
25
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to see my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
30
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
35
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
40
About a prophecy, which says, that G
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Arcite’s ‘Let’s Think this Prison Holy Sanctuary’ Speech (The Two Noble Kinsmen)
Act II. Scene II
.
Palamon and Arcite in prison in chains.
Arc.
Let’s think this prison holy sanctuary,
To keep us from corruption of worse men.
We are young, and yet desire the ways of honour
That liberty and common conversation,
The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,
75
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
Can be, but our imaginations
May make it ours? And here being thus together,
We are an endless mine to one another:
We are one another’s wife, ever begetting
80
New births of love; we are father, friends, acquaintance;
We are in one another, families —
I am your heir, and you are mine; this place
Is our inheritance: no hard oppressor
Dare take this from us. Here, with a little patience,
85
We shall live long and loving. No surfeits seek us —
The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas
Swallow their youth. Were we at liberty
A wife might part us lawfully, or business;
Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men
90
Crave our acquaintance. I might sicken, cousin,
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,
Or prayers to the gods. A thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Valentine’s ‘What Light is Light?’ Speech (Two Gentlemen of Verona)
Act III. Scene I
.
Val.
And why not death rather than living torment?
To die is to be banish’d from myself;
And Silvia is myself: banish’d from her
165
Is self from self, — a deadly banishment!
What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?
Unless it be to think that she is by
And feed upon the shadow of perfection.
170
Except I be by Silvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale;
Unless I look on Silvia in the day,
There is no day for me to look upon.
She is my essence; and I leave to be,
175
If I be not by her fair influence
Foster’d, illumin’d, cherish’d, kept alive.
I fly not death, to fly his deadly doom:
Tarry I here, I but attend on death;
But, fly I hence, I fly away from life.
180
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
WHEN icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
5
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whoo!
To-whit, Tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all about the wind doth blow,
10
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl —
Then nightly sings the staring owl
15
Tu-whoo!
To-whit, Tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting —
5
Every wise man’s son doth know.
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty, —
10
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
TELL me where is Fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourishèd?
Reply, reply.
It is engender’d in the eyes;
5
With gazing fed; and Fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies:
Let us all ring Fancy’s knell;
I’ll begin it, — Ding, dong, bell.
— Ding, dong, bell.
10
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order