Evolution of Expression Volume Ii Part 16

Gone, gone, so soon!

No more my half-crazed fancy there Can shape a giant in the air, No more I see his streaming hair, The writhing portent of his form; The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

JAQUES' SEVEN AGES OF MAN.

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits, and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel, And s.h.i.+ning morning face, creeping, like snail, Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then the soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice, In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd, With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances, And so he plays his part. The sixth age s.h.i.+fts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side; His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange, eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.