The Sea and the Mirror I., Prospero to Ariel

Stay with me, Ariel, while I pack, and with you first free act
Delight my leaving; share my resigning thoughts
As you have served my revelling wishes: then, brave spirit,
Ages to you of song and daring, and to me
Briefly Milan, then earth. In all, things have turned out better
Then I once expected or ever deserted;
I am glad that I did not recover my dukedom till
I do not want it; I am glad that Miranda
No longer pays me any attention; I am glad I have freed you,
So at last I can really believe I shall die.
For under your influence death is inconceivable:
On walks through winter woods, a bird's dry carcass
Agitates the retina with novel images,
A stranger's quiet collapse in a noisy street
Is the beginning of much lively speculation,
And every time some dear flesh disappears
What is real is the arriving grief; thanks to your service,
The lonely and unhappy are very much alive.
But now all these heavy books are no use to me any more, for
Where I go, words carry no weight: it is best,
Then, I surrender their fascinating counsel
To the silent dissolution of the sea
Which misuses nothing because it values nothing;
Whereas man overvalues everything
Yet, when he learns the price is pegged to his valuation,
Complains bitterly he is being ruined which, of course, he is.
So kings find it odd they should have a million subjects
Yet share in the thoughts of none, and seducers
Are sincerely puzzled at being unable to love
What they are able to possess; so, long ago,
In an open boat, I wept at giving a city,
Common warmth and touching substance, for a gift
In dealing with shadows. If age, which is certainly
Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser,
It is only that youth is still able to believe
It will get away with anything, while age
Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing:
The child runs out to play in the garden, convinced
That the furniture will go on with its thinking lesson,
Who, fifty years later, if he plays at all,
Will first ask its kind permission to be excused.

When I woke into my life, a sobbing dwarf
Whom giants served only as they pleased,
                              I was not what I seemed;
Beyond their busy backs I made a magic
To ride away from a father's imperfect justice,
Take vengeance on the Romans for their grammar,
Usurp the popular earth and blot out for ever
The gross insult of being a mere one among many:
Now, Ariel, I am that I am, your late and lonely master,
Who knows now what magic is :—the power to enchant
That comes from disillusion. What the books can teach one
Is that most desires end up in stinking ponds,
But we have only to learn to sit still and give no orders,
To make you offer us your echo and your mirror;
We have only to believe you, then you dare not lie;
To ask for nothing, and at once from your calm eyes,
With their lucid proof of apprehension and disorder,
All we are not stares back at what we are.
                                                        For all things,
In your company, can be themselves: historic deeds
Drop their hauteur and speak of shabby childhoods
When all they longed for was to join in the gang of doubts
Who so tormented them; sullen diseases
Forget their dreadful appearance and make silly jokes;
Thick-headed goodness for orice is not a bore.
No one but you had sufficient audacity and eyesight
To find those clearings where the shy humiliations
Gambol on sunny afternoons, the waterhole to which
The scarred rogue sorrow comes quietly in the small hours:
And no one but you is reliably informative on hell;
As you whistle and skip past, the poisonous
Resentments scuttle over your unrevolted feet,
And even the uncontrollable vertigo,
Because it can scent no shame, is unobliged to strike.

Could he but once see Nature as
In truth she is for ever,
What oncer would not fall in love?
Hold up your mirror, boy, to do
Your vulgar friends this favour:
One peep, though, will be quite enough;
To those who are not true,
A statue with no figleaf has
A pornographic flavour.

Inform my hot heart straight away
Its treasure loves another,
But turn to neutral topics then,
Such as the pictures in this room,
Religion or the Weather;
Pure scholarship in Where and When,
How Often and With Whom,
Is not for Passion that must play
The Jolly Elder Brother. 

Be frank about our heathen foe,
For Rome will be a goner
If you soft-pedal the loud beast;
Describe in plain four-letter .words
This dragon that's upon her:
But should our beggars ask the cost,
]ust whistle like the birds;
Dare even Pope or Caesar know
The price of faith and honour?

To-day I am free and no longer need your freedom:
You, I suppose, will be off now to look for likely victims;
Crowds chasing ankles, lone men stalking glory,
Some feverish young rebel among amiable flowers
In consultation with his handsome envy,
A punctual plump judge, a fly-weight hermit in a dream
Of gardens that time is for ever outside—
To lead absurdly by their self-important noses.
Are you malicious by nature? I don't know.
Perhaps only incapable of doing nothing or of
Being by yourself, and, for all your wry faces,
May secretly be anxious and miserable without
A master to need you for the work you need.
Are all your tricks a test? If so, I hope you find, next time,
Someone in whom you cannot spot the weakness
Through which you will corrupt him with your charm. Mine                                                                             you did
And me you have: thanks to us both, I have broken
Both of the promises I made as an apprentice;—
To hate nothing and to ask nothing for its love.
To hate nothing and to ask nothing for its love.
All by myself I tempted Antonio into treason;
However that could be cleared up; both of us know
That both were in the wrong, and neither need be sorry:
But Caliban remains my impervious disgrace.
We did it, Ariel, between us; you found on me a wish
For absolute devotion; result—his wreck
That sprawls in the weeds and will not be repaired:
My dignity discouraged by a pupil's curse,
I shall go knowing and incompetent into my grave.

The extravagant children, who lately swaggered
Out of the sea like gods, have, I think, been soundly hunted
By their own devils into their human selves:
To all, then, but me, their pardons. Alonso's heaviness
Is lost; and weak Sebastian will be patient
In future with his slothful conscience—after all, it pays;
Stephano is contracted to his belly, a minor
But a prosperous kingdom; stale Trinculo receives,
Gratis, a whole fresh repertoire of stories, and
Our younger generation its independent joy.
Their eyes are big and blue with love; its lighting
Makes even us look new: yes, to-day it all looks so easy.
Will Ferdinand be as fond of a Miranda
Familiar as a stocking? Will a Miranda who is
No longer a silly lovesick little goose,
When Ferdinand and his brave world are her profession,
Go into raptures over existing at all?
Probably I over-estimate their difficulties;
Just the same, I am very glad I shall never
Be twenty and have to go through that business again,
The hours of fuss and fury, the conceit, the expense.

Sing first that green remote Cockaigne
Where whiskey-rivers run,
And every gorgeous number may
Be laid by anyone;
For medicine and rhetoric
Lie mouldering on shelves,
While sad young dogs and stomach-aches
Love no one but themselves.

Tell then of witty angels who
Come only to the beasts,
Of Heirs Apparent who prefer
Low dives to formal feasts;
For shameless Insecurity
Prays for a boot to lick,
And many a sore bottom finds
A sorer one to kick.

Wind up, though, on a moral note:-
That Glory will go bang,
Schoolchildren shall co-operate,
And honest rogues must hang;
Because our sound committee man
Has murder in his heart:
But should you catch a living eye,
Just wink as you depart.

Now our partnership is dissolved, I feel so peculiar:
As if I had been on a drunk since I was born
And suddenly now, and for the first time, am cold sober,
With all my unanswered wishes and unwashed days
Stacked up all around my life; as if through
                                           the ages I had dreamed
About some tremendous journey I was taking,
Sketching imaginary landscapes, chasms and cities,
Cold walls, hot spaces, wild mouths, defeated backs,
Jotting down fictional notes on secrets overheard
In theatres and privies, banks and mountain inns,
And now, in my old age, I wake, and this journey really exists,
And I have actually to take it, inch by inch,
Alone and on foot, without a cent in my pocket,
Through a universe where time is not foreshortened,
No animals talk, and there is neither floating nor flying.

When I am safely home, oceans away in Milan, and
Realise once and for all I shall never see you again,
Over there, maybe, it won't seem quite so dreadful
Not to be interesting any more, but an old man
Just like other old men, with eyes that water
Easily in the wind, and a head that nods in the sunshine,
Forgetful, maladroit, a little grubby,
And to like it. When the servants settle me into a chair
In some well-sheltered corner of the garden,
And arrange my muffler and rugs, shall I ever be able
To stop myself from telling them what I am doing,—
Sailing alone, out over seventy thousand fathoms—?
Yet if  I speak, I shall sink without a sound
Into unmeaning abysses. Can I learn to suffer
Without saying something ironic or funny
On suffering? I never suspected the way of truth
Was a way of silence where affectionate chat
Is but a robbers' ambush and even good music
In shocking taste; and you, of course, never told me.
If I peg away at it honestly every moment,
And have luck, perhaps by the time death pounces
His stumping question, I shall just be getting to know
The difference between moonshine and daylight . . . .
I see you starting to fidget. I forgot. To you
That doesn't matter. My dear, here comes Gonzalo
With a solemn face to fetch me. O Ariel, Ariel,
How I shall miss you. Enjoy your element. Good-bye.

Sing, Ariel, sing,
Sweetly, dangerously
Out of the sour
And shiftless water,
Lucidly out
Of  the dozing tree,
Entrancing, rebuking
The raging heart
With a smoother song
Than this rough world,
Unfeeling god.

O brilliantly, lightly,
Of separation,
Of bodies and death,
Unanxious one, sing
To man, meaning me,
As now, meaning always,
In love or out,
Whatever that mean,
Trembling he takes
The silent passage
Into discomfort.