Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre 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,Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We… Continue reading William Shakespeare
With fairest flowersWhilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele,I’ll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lackThe flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, norThe azured harebell, like thy veins, no, norThe leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,Out-sweeten’d not thy breath: the ruddock would,With charitable bill,–O bill, sore-shamingThose rich-left heirs that let their… Continue reading William Shakespeare
Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires. — William Shakespeare, Macbeth: Act I, Scene vi (1606)
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter—In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. — William Shakespeare, from “Sonnet 87,” The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford University Press, 2008)
O, hereWill I set up my everlasting rest,And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O youThe doors of breath, seal with a righteous kissA dateless bargain to engrossing death! — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene iii
There lives within the very flame of loveA kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,And nothing is at a like goodness still,For goodness, growing to a plurisy,Dies in his own too much. — William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act IV, Scene vii
Though much is taken, much abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. — Lord Alfred Tennyson, from “Ulysses,”… Continue reading Lord Alfred Tennyson
Her kisses were so close and kind,That, trust me on my word,Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,But yet my sap was stirr’d: — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from “The Talking Oak,” The Complete Works of Alfred Tennyson. (The Arundel Printing and Publishing Company, New York 1851)
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,Are of imagination all compact. —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act V, Scene i
For death remembered should be like a mirror,Who tells us life’s but breath, to trust it error.” ― William Shakespeare, Pericles. Act I, Scene i
The Vale of Soul-Making 