I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul,
Was my great father-in law, renowned Warwick;
Who cried aloud,- What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?
And so he vanished: Then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair

Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud,-
Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury ;-
Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments !-
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise,
I trembling waked, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell;
Such terrible impression made my dream.
Brak. No marvel, lord, that it affrighted you;
I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.

Clar. O, Brackenbury, I have done those things,That now give evidence against my soul,—

For Edward's sake; and, see, how he requites me!
O God! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee,
But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds,
Yet execute thy wrath on me alone:

O, spare my guiltless wife, and my poor children!-
I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me;

My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.

SHAKSPERE.

HAMLET.

ACT III., SCENE 1.

Enter Hamlet.

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 ;-
No more;—and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,-'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die;-to sleep ;-

To sleep! perchance, to dream;-Ay, there's the rub;—
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,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised 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
With a bare bodkin! who would fardels bear,
Το groan and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death, -
The undiscovered country, from whose bourne
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 sicklyed o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

SHAKSPERE.

EXTRACTS FROM PARADISE LOST.

FALLEN ANGELS.

THUS Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:
Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays:

So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake.

He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,

Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesolè,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand,
He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marl, not like those steps
On heaven's azure: and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire:
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called
His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High over-arched, imbower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed

Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,

While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases

And broken chariot wheels: so thick bestrown,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He called so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of hell resounded!

They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung

Upon the wing; as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to their general's voice they soon obeyed;
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,

Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad angels seen,
Hovering on wing under the cope of hell,
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
Till, as a signal given, the up-lifted spear
Of their great sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain;
A multitude, like which the populous north
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the south, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.

All these and more came flocking; but with looks Downcast and damp; yet such wherein appeared Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their chief Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost In loss itself; which on his countenance cast Like doubtful hue: but he, his wonted pride Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears. Then straight commands, that at the warlike sound