Whether 't is 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 heartache, 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 despiséd 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,
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 pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
with this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Shakespeare.
CCXLII.
SOLILOQUY OF HAMLET'S UNCLE.
Oh! my offence is rank; it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal, eldest curse upon 't,
A brother's murder! Pray I cannot,
Though inclination be as sharp as 't will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this curséd hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood;
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy,
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer, but this twofold force,--
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past.--But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? "Forgive me my foul murder!"
That cannot be; since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder,--
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned, and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft 't is seen, the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 't is not so above;
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it, when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom, black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engag'd! Help, angels! make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart, with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
All may be well.
Shakespeare.
CCXLIII.
PERSEVERANCE KEEPS HONOR BRIGHT.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done, Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright. To have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For Honor travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For Emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost;--
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun and trampled on. Then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours:
For Time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand;
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps-in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing. O, let not Virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, alacrity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating Time.
One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin,--
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past;
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
More land than gilt o'erdusted.
The present eye praises the present object:
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye
Than what not stirs: The cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet it may again,
If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent;
Whose glorious deeds, did but in these fields of late,
Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves,
And drave great Mars to faction.
Shakespeare.
CCXLIV.
MACBETH'S SOLILOQUY.
Is this a dagger, which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? come, let me clutch thee:--
I have thee not; and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight, or art thou but
A dagger of the mind--a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business, which informs
Thus to mine eyes.--Know, o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep; now Witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered Murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my where-about,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives;
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. [A bell rings.]
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell,
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
Shakespeare.
CCXLV.
ROMEO IN THE GARDEN.
But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!--
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious:
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
It is my lady: O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!--
She speaks, yet she says nothing: what of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold; 't is not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright,
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
She speaks:--
O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air.
Shakespeare.
CCXLVI.
POLONIUS TO LAERTES.
My blessing with you!
And these few precepts in thy memory,
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade: beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear it, that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France, of the best rank and station,
Are most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft, loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,--to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man!
Shakespeare.
CCXLVII.
WOLSEY, ON BEING CAST OFF BY THE KING.
Nay, then, farewell!
I have touched the highest point of all my greatness;
And, from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting: I shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
And no man see me more.
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow, blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And, when he thinks,--good easy man,--full surely
His greatness is a ripening,--nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
These many summers in a sea of glory;
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me; and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!
I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!
There is, betwixt that smile he would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and his ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have.
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again!
Shakespeare.
CCXLVIII.
WOLSEY TO CROMWELL.
Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear
In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.
Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell;
And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of,--say, I taught thee,--
Say, Wolsey,--that once trod the ways of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor,--
Found thee away, out of his wreck, to rise in;
A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.--
Mark but my fall, and that which ruined me!
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition!
By that sin fell the angels: how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't?
Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee:
Corruption wins not more than honesty;
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim'st at, be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fallest, O Cromwell,
Thou fallest a blesséd martyr! Serve the king;
And--Prithee, lead me in:
There, take an inventory of all I have,
To the last penny; 't is the king's; my robe,
And my integrity to Heaven, is all
I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, He would not, in mine age,
Have left me naked to mine enemies!
Shakespeare.
CCXLIX.
GRIFFITH'S DESCRIPTION OF CARDINAL WOLSEY.
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water. May it please your highness
To hear me speak his good now? This Cardinal,
Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly
Was fashioned to much honor. From his cradle,
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one:
Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading;
Lofty and sour to them that lov'd him not,
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer;
And though he were unsatisfied in getting,
(Which was a sin), yet in bestowing, madam,
He was most princely; ever witness for him
Those twins of learning that he raised in you,
Ipswich and Oxford! one of which fell with him,
Unwilling to outlive the good he did it;
The other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous,
So excellent in art, and still so rising,
That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.
His overthrow heaped happiness upon him;
For then and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little:
And to add greater honors to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing God.
Shakespeare.
BOOK SECOND.
RECENT SELECTIONS
FOR
RECITATION AND DECLAMATION
IN PROSE AND POETRY.
BOOK SECOND.
RECENT SELECTIONS.
PROSE.
CCL.
THE ORATORS OF REVOLUTIONS.
And then and thus comes the orator of that time, kindling with their fire;
sympathizing with that great beating heart; penetrated, not subdued; lifted
up rather by a sublime and rare moment of history made real to his
consciousness; charged with the very mission of life, yet unassured whether
they will hear or will forbear; transcendent good within their grasp, yet a
possibility that the fatal and critical opportunity of salvation will be
wasted; the last evil of nations and of men overhanging, yet the siren song
of peace--peace when there is no peace--chanted madly by some voice of
sloth or fear,--there and thus the orators of revolutions come to work
their work! And what then is demanded, and how it is to be done, you all
see; and that in some of the characteristics of their eloquence they must
all be alike. Actions, not law or policy: whose growth and fruits are to be
slowly evolved by time and calm; actions daring, doubtful but instant; the
new things of a new world,--these are what the speaker counsels; large,
elementary, gorgeous ideas of right, of equality, of independence, of
liberty, of progress through convulsion,--these are the principles from
which he reasons, when he reasons,--these are the pinions of the thought on
which he soars and stays; and then the primeval and indestructible
sentiments of the breast of man,--his sense of right, his estimation of
himself, his sense of honor, his love of fame, his triumph and his joy in
the dear name of country, the trophies that tell of the past, the hopes
that gild and herald her dawn,--these are the springs of action to which he
appeals,--these are the chords his fingers sweep, and from which he draws
out the troubled music, "solemn as death, serene as the undying confidence
of patriotism," to which he would have the battalions of the people march!
Directness, plainness, a narrow range of topics, few details, few but grand
ideas, a headlong tide of sentiment and feeling; vehement, indignant, and
reproachful reasonings,--winged general maxims of wisdom and life; an
example from Plutarch; a pregnant sentence of Tacitus; thoughts going forth
as ministers of nature in robes of light, and with arms in their hands;
thoughts that breathe and words that burn,--these vaguely, approximately,
express the general type of all this speech.
R. Choate.
CCLI.
THE ELOQUENCE OF REVOLUTIONS
The capital peculiarity of the eloquence of all times of revolution, is
that the actions it persuades to are the highest and most heroic which men
can do, and the passions it would inspire, in order to persuade to them,
are the most lofty which man can feel. "High actions and high
passions"--such are Milton's words, high actions through and by high
passions; these are the end and these the means of the orator of the
revolution. Hence are his topics large, simple, intelligible, affecting.
Hence are his views broad, impressive, popular; no trivial details, no
wire-woven developments, no subtle distinctions and drawing of fine lines
about the boundaries of ideas, no speculation, no ingenuity; all is
elemental, comprehensive, intense, practical, unqualified, undoubting. It
is not of the small things of minor and instrumental politics he comes to
speak, or men come to hear. It is not to speak or to hear about permitting
an Athenian citizen to change his tribe; about permitting the Roman knights
to have jurisdiction of trials equally with the Senate; it is not about
allowing a £10 householder to vote for a member of Parliament; about duties
on indigo, or onion-seed, or even tea.
"That strain you hear is of an higher mood."
It is the rallying-cry of patriotism, of liberty, in the sublimest crisis
of the State,--of man. It is a deliberation of empire, of glory, of
existence, on which they come together. To be or not to be, that is the
question. Shall the children of the men of Marathon become slaves of
Philip? Shall the majesty of the Senate and people of Rome stoop to wear
the chains forging by the military executors of the will of Julius Cæsar?
Shall the assembled representatives of France, just waking from her sleep
of ages to claim the rights of man,--shall they disperse, their work
undone, their work just commencing; and shall they disperse at the order of
the king? or shall the messenger be bid to go, in the thunder-tones of
Mirabeau,--and tell his master that "we sit here to do the will of our
constituents, and that we will not be moved from those seats but by the
point of the bayonet?" Shall Ireland bound upward from her long
prostration, and cast from her the last links of the British chain, and
shall she advance "from injuries to arms, from arms to liberty," from
liberty to glory? Shall the thirteen Colonies become, and be free and
independent States, and come unabashed, unterrified, an equal, into the
majestic assembly of the nations?
These are the thoughts with which all bosoms are distended and oppressed.
Filled with these, and with these flashing in every eye, swelling every
heart, pervading electric all ages, all orders, like a visitation, "an
unquenchable public fire," men come together,--the thousands of Athens
around the Bema, or in the Temple of Dionysus,--the people of Rome in the
forum, the Senate in that council-chamber of the world,--the masses of
France, as the spring-tide, into her gardens of the Tuileries, her
club-rooms, her hall of the convention,--the representatives, the genius,
the grace, the beauty of Ireland into the Tuscan Gallery of her House of
Commons,--the delegates of the Colonies into the Hall of Independence at
Philadelphia,--thus men come in an hour of revolution, to hang upon the
lips from which they hope, they need, they demand, to hear the things which
belong to their national salvation, hungering for the bread of life.
R. Choate.
CCLII.
AMERICAN NATIONALITY.
By the side of all antagonisms, higher than they, stronger than they, there
rises colossal the fine sweet spirit of nationality, the nationality of
America! See there the pillar of fire which God has kindled and lifted and
moved for our hosts and our ages. Gaze on that, worship that, worship the
highest in that. Between that light and our eyes a cloud for a time may
seem to gather; chariots, armed men on foot, the troops of kings may march
on us, and our fears may make us for a moment turn from it; a sea may
spread before us, and waves seem to hedge us up; dark idolatries may
alienate some hearts for a season from that worship; revolt, rebellion, may
break out in the camp, and the waters of our springs may run bitter to the
taste and mock it; between us and that Canaan a great river may seem to be
rolling; but beneath that high guidance our way is onward, ever onward;
those waters shall part, and stand on either hand in heaps; that idolatry
shall repent; that rebellion shall be crushed; that stream shall be
sweetened; that overflowing river shall be passed on foot dryshod, in
harvest time; and from that promised land of flocks, fields, tents,
mountains, coasts, and ships, from north and south, and east and west,
there shall swell one cry yet, of victory, peace, and thanksgiving!
R. Choate.
CCLII.
THE SAME CONTINUED.
Think of this nationality first as a state of consciousness, as a spring of
feeling, as a motive to exertion, as blessing your country, and as reacting
on you. Think of it as it fills your mind and quickens your heart, and as
it fills the mind and quickens the heart of millions around you. Instantly,
under such an influence, you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small
local strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history;
you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her
consideration, her honor, are yours; your competitors, like hers, are
kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on the
highway of empires; our charge, her charge, is of generations and ages;
your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the
constellations; her image, one, immortal, golden, rises on your eye as our
western star at evening rises on the traveller from his home; no lowering
cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken crevasse, no
inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that
surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the
image, harbinger, and promiser of love, hope, and a brighter day!
But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around
you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do?
This day and all which it stands for,--did it not give us these? This glory
of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this one wide
sheet of flame which wrapped tyrant and tyranny and swept all that escaped
from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to
rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young
heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation
crowned the work,--were not all these imparted or inspired by this imperial
sentiment? Has it not here begun the master-work of man, the creation of a
national life? Did it not call out that prodigious development of wisdom,
the wisdom of constructiveness which illustrated the years after the war,
and the framing and adopting of the Constitution? Has it not, in general,
contributed to the administering of that government wisely and well since?
R. Choate.
CCLIV.
THE SAME CONCLUDED.
Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us in
no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and just. The
victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the larger and truer
grandeur of the nations, for which they are created, and for which they
must one day, before some tribunal, give an account, what a measure of
these it has enabled us already to fulfil! It has lifted us to the throne,
and has set on our brow the name of the Great Republic. It has taught us to
demand nothing wrong, and to submit to nothing wrong; it has made our
diplomacy sagacious, wary, accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the
mountains and planted our ensign on the great, tranquil sea.
It has made the desert to bud and blossom as the rose; it has quickened to
life the giant brood of useful arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with
the sails of a daring, new, and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles,
flying as clouds, the asylum of our better liberty.
It has kept us at rest within all our borders; it has repressed without
blood the intemperance of local insubordination; it has scattered the seeds
of liberty, under law and under order, broadcast; it has seen and helped
American feeling to swell into a fuller flood; from many a field and many a
deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has
borne the radiant flag, all unstained; it has opened our age of lettered
glory; it has opened and honored the age of the industry of the people!
R. Choate.
CCLV.
THE NATIONAL ENSIGN.
Sir, I must detain you no longer. I have said enough, and more than enough,
to manifest the spirit in which this flag is now committed to your charge.
It is the national ensign, pure and simple; dearer to all our hearts at
this moment, as we lift it to the gale, and see no other sign of hope upon
the storm-cloud which rolls and rattles above it, save that which is
reflected from its own radiant hues; dearer, a thousand-fold dearer to us
all, than ever it was before, while gilded by the sunshine of prosperity
and playing with the zephyrs of peace. It will speak for itself far more
eloquently than I can speak for it.
Behold it! Listen to it! Every star has a tongue; every stripe is
articulate. There is no language or speech where their voices are not
heard. There's magic in the web of it. It has an answer for every question
of duty. It has a solution for every doubt and perplexity. It has a word of
good cheer for every hour of gloom or of despondency.