You elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves
Prospero
You elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And you that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrumps, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though you be, I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ’em forth
By my so potent art.
I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book
But this rough magic
I here abjure, and when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
Prospero gestures with his staff.
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for,I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book. Solemn music.
Here enters Ariel before; then Alonso with a frantic
gesture, attended by Gonzalo; Sebastian and Antonio in
like manner attended by Adrian and Francisco. They all
enter the circle which Prospero had made, and there
stand charmed; which Prospero observing, speaks.
A solemn air, and the best comforter
To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,
Now useless, boiled within thy skull. There stand,
For you are spell-stopped.—
Holy Gonzalo, honorable man,
Mine eyes, e’en sociable to the show of thine,
Fall fellowly drops.—The charm dissolves apace,
And as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.—O good Gonzalo,
My true preserver and a loyal sir
To him thou follow’st, I will pay thy graces
Home, both in word and deed.—Most cruelly
Didst thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter.
Thy brother was a furtherer in the act.—
Thou art pinched for ’t now, Sebastian.—Flesh and blood,
You, brother mine, that entertained ambition,
Expelled remorse and nature, whom, with Sebastian,
Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong,
Would here have killed your king, I do forgive thee,
Unnatural though thou art.—Their understanding
Begins to swell, and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them
That yet looks on me or would know me.—Ariel,
Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell.
Ariel exits and at once returns
with Prospero’s ducal robes.
I will discase me and myself present
As I was sometime Milan.—Quickly, spirit,
Thou shalt ere long be free.
Ariel sings, and helps to attire him.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I.
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 bow.
Prospero
Why, that’s my dainty Ariel. I shall miss
Thee, 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 prithee.
Ariel
I drink the air before me, and return
Or ere your pulse twice beat.
He exits.