C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Songs and Their Settings: Ariel’s Songs
By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
And then take hands:
Court’sied when you have, and kiss’d
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.
Hark, hark!
Burden—Bow, wow[dispersedly].
The watch-dogs bark:
Burden—Bow, wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticlere
Cry Cock-a-doodle-doo.
It sounds no more;—and sure, it waits upon
Some god o’ the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father’s wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion,
With its sweet air; thence I have followed it,
Or it hath drawn me rather;—but ’tis gone.—
No, it begins again.
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Burden—Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them,—ding-dong, bell.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes—I hear it now above me.
In a cowslip’s bell I lie:
There I couch. When owls do cry,
On the bat’s back I do fly,
After summer, merrily:
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
But yet thou shalt have freedom;—so, so, so.—
To the king’s ship, invisible as thou art:
There shalt thou find the mariners asleep
Under the hatches; the master, and the boatswain,
Being awake, enforce them to this place,
And presently, I pr’ythee.
Ariel—I drink the air before me, and return
Or e’er your pulse twice beat.[Exit Ariel.]