Exploring The Waste Land - Supplementary text

The Tempest

Act 1, Scene ii

William Shakespeare

[Lines deleted]

FERDINAND

Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?
It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone.
No, it begins again.

ARIEL sings
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell

Burthen Ding-dong
Hark! now I hear them,--Ding-dong, bell.

FERDINAND

The ditty does remember my drown'd father.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes. I hear it now above me.

PROSPERO

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance
And say what thou seest yond.

[Lines following this omitted]


Exploring The Waste Land - [Home] [E-mail] File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002