That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
  When he himself might his quietus take
  With a bare bodkin?[98] Who would fardels[99] bear,
  To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
  But that the dread of something after death,
  The undiscovered 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;
  And thus the native hue of resolution
  Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
  And enterprises of great pith and moment,
  With this regard, their currents turn away
  And lose the name of action.

[Footnote 97:  Without.]

DETACHED PASSAGES FROM THE PLAYS.

  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.

  Our revels now are ended:  these our actors,
  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-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
  The solemn temples, the great globe itself—­
  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
  Leave not a rack[100] behind.  We are such stuff
  As dreams are made on, and our little life
  Is rounded[101] with a sleep.

  Ay, but 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 regions of thick-ribbed ice;
  To be imprisoned 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 uncertain thoughts
  Imagine howling! ’tis too horrible!

  O who can hold a fire in his hand,
  By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? 
  Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
  By bare imagination of a feast? 
  Or wallow naked in December snow,
  By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat? 
  O no! the apprehension of the good
  Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

  She never told her love,
  But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
  Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought,
  And with a green and yellow melancholy,
  She sat, like patience on a monument,
  Smiling at grief.