by Homer
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 170
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Puck’s Epilogue (Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Puck. If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme, 60
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I’m an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck 65
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call:
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends, 70
And Robin shall restore amends. [Exit.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Othello’s ‘Put Out the Light’ Speech
Act V. Scene II.
A Bedchamber in the Castle. DESDEMONA in bed asleep. A light burning.
Enter OTHELLO.
Oth. It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul;
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood, 5
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, 10
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck’d the rose, 15
I cannot give it vital growth again,
It needs must wither: I’ll smell it on the tree. [Kisses her.
O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword! One more, one more.
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, 20
And love thee after. One more, and this the last:
So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep,
But they are cruel tears; this sorrow’s heavenly,
It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.
Des. Who’s there? Othello? 25
Oth. Ay, Desdemona.
Des. Will you come to bed, my lord?
Oth. Have you pray’d to-night, Desdemona?
Des. Ay, my lord.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Gaunt’s ‘This England’ Speech (Richard II)
Act II. Scene I.
Gaunt. Methinks I am a prophet new inspir’d,
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, 35
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, 40
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself 45
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house, 50
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home, — 55
For Christian service and true chivalry, —
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son:
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world, 60
Is now leas’d out, — I die pronouncing it, —
Like to a tenement, or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, 65
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah! would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death. 70
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Hamlet’s ‘To Be or Not to Be’ Speech
Act III. Scene I.
Enter HAMLET. 65
Ham. 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,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; 70
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; 75
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, 80
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d 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 85
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, 90
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;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, 95
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d. 100
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Prospero’s ‘Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on’ Speech (The Tempest)
Act VI. Scene I.
Pro. You do look, my son, in a mov’d sort,
> As if you were dismay’d: be cheerful, sir:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 160
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 165
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. — Sir, I am vex’d: 170
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled.
Be not disturb’d with my infirmity.
If you be pleas’d, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I’ll walk,
To still my beating mind. 175
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Henry V’s ‘Once More unto the Breach’ Speech
Act III. Scene I.
France. Before Harfleur.
Alarums. Enter KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, and Soldiers, with scaling ladders.
K. Hen. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man 5
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage; 10
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base, 15
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height! On, on, you noblest English!
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof; 20
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheath’d their swords for lack of argument.
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you. 25
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not; 30
For there is none of you so mean and base
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge 35
Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!’
[Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Macbeth’s ‘To-morrow’ Speech
Act V. Scene V.
Macb. 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, 25
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, 30
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Anthony’s ‘Let Slip the Dogs of War’ Speech (Julius Caesar)
Act III. Scene I.
Ant. O! pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers; 280
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood;
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,
Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips, 285
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue,
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use, 290
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;
All pity chok’d with custom of fell deeds:
And Cæsar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, 295
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial. 300
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Famous Description of Cleopatra on the Barge (Anthony and Cleopatra)
Act II. Scene II.
Eno. I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that 225
The winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description; she did lie 230
In her pavilion, — cloth-of-gold of tissue, —
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature; on each side her
Stood pretty-dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem 235
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
Agr. O! rare for Antony.
Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes, 240
And made their bends adornings; at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense 245
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her, and Antony,
Enthron’d i’ the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too 250
And made a gap in nature.
Agr. Rare Egyptian!
Eno. Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
Invited her to supper; she replied
It should be better he became her guest, 255
Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,
Whom ne’er the word of ‘No’ woman heard speak,
Being barber’d ten times o’er, goes to the feast,
And, for his ordinary pays his heart
For what his eyes eat only. 260
Agr. Royal wench!
She made great Cæsar lay his sword to bed;
He plough’d her, and she cropp’d
.
Eno. I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street; 265
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted
That she did make defect perfection,
And, breathless, power breathe forth.
Mec. Now Antony must leave her utterly.
Eno. Never; he will not: 270
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests 275
Bless her when she is riggish.
Mec. If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
The heart of Antony, Octavia is
A blessed lottery to him.
Agr. Let us go. 280
Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest
Whilst you abide here.
Eno. Humbly, sir, I thank you. [Exeunt.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Edmund’s ‘Now Gods Stand Up for Bastards’ Speech (King Lear)
Act I. Scene II.
A Hall in the EARL OF GLOUCESTER’S Castle.
Enter EDMUND, with a letter.
Edm. Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit 5
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true, 10