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

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

awry,

And lose the name of action. -Soft you, now!

The fair Ophelia:-Nymph, in thy

orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

THE earth goes on the earth glittering in gold,

The earth goes to the earth sooner than it would;

The earth builds on the earth castles and towers,

The earth says to the earth-All

this is ours.

"And thou, though strong in love, art all too weak

reason, in self-government too slow;

In

I counsel thee by fortitude to seek Our blessed re-union in the shades below.

The invisible world with thee hath sympathized;

Be thy affections raised and solemnized.

"Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend,

Seeking a higher object: - Love was given,

Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end:

For this the passion to excess was driven

That self might be annulled; her bondage prove

The fetters of a dream, opposed to love."