I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch
over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken
dishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and
the ornament of a worm of worms.
over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken
dishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and
the ornament of a worm of worms.
Shelley
until the top of the
Tower. . . of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look
as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured
upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures
were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set
off, and at the Tower-- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found
close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
KING:
Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience. _435
ARCHY:
Then conscience is a fool. --I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I
heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the
very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.
QUEEN:
Archy is shrewd and bitter.
ARCHY:
Like the season, _440
So blow the winds. --But at the other end of the rainbow, where the
gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender
interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what
think you that I found instead of a mitre?
KING:
Vane's wits perhaps. _445
ARCHY:
Something as vain.
I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch
over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken
dishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and
the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to
enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of
this ass. _451
QUEEN:
Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane
She place my lute, together with the music
Mari received last week from Italy,
In my boudoir, and--
[EXIT ARCHY. ]
KING:
I'll go in.
NOTE:
_254-_455 For by. . . I'll go in 1870; omitted 1824.
QUEEN:
MY beloved lord, _455
Have you not noted that the Fool of late
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
What can it mean? I should be loth to think
Some factious slave had tutored him.
KING:
Oh, no! _460
He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tis
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning,--
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find _465
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
And partly, that the terrors of the time
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
And in the lightest and the least, may best
Be seen the current of the coming wind. _470
NOTES:
_460, _461 Oh.
Tower. . . of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look
as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured
upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures
were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set
off, and at the Tower-- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found
close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
KING:
Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience. _435
ARCHY:
Then conscience is a fool. --I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I
heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the
very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.
QUEEN:
Archy is shrewd and bitter.
ARCHY:
Like the season, _440
So blow the winds. --But at the other end of the rainbow, where the
gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender
interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what
think you that I found instead of a mitre?
KING:
Vane's wits perhaps. _445
ARCHY:
Something as vain.
I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch
over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken
dishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and
the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to
enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of
this ass. _451
QUEEN:
Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane
She place my lute, together with the music
Mari received last week from Italy,
In my boudoir, and--
[EXIT ARCHY. ]
KING:
I'll go in.
NOTE:
_254-_455 For by. . . I'll go in 1870; omitted 1824.
QUEEN:
MY beloved lord, _455
Have you not noted that the Fool of late
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
What can it mean? I should be loth to think
Some factious slave had tutored him.
KING:
Oh, no! _460
He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tis
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning,--
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find _465
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
And partly, that the terrors of the time
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
And in the lightest and the least, may best
Be seen the current of the coming wind. _470
NOTES:
_460, _461 Oh.
