The Tempest

Some dreams are worth crying over when they end.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears, and sometime voicesThat, if I then had waked after long sleep,Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,The clouds methought would open and show richesReady to drop upon me, that, when I waked,I cried to dream again.

The thought that arrives when a good evening ends.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.

He remembers kindness and theft in the same breath.

I must eat my dinner.This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give meWater with berries in’t, and teach me howTo name the bigger light, and how the less,That burn by day and night: and then I loved theeAnd show’d thee all the qualities o’ the isle,The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:Cursed be I that did so! All the charmsOf Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!