If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. _Hamlet_ Such a style moves easily into the highest flights of poetry: (1) That strain again! it had a dying fall: O! it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour. _Twelfth Night_ (2) _Cleopatra._ Come, thou mortal wretch, [_To the asp, which she applies to her breast._ With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie; poor venomous fool, Be angry, and despatch.... _Charmian._ O eastern star! _Cleopatra._ Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep? _Antony and Cleopatra_ Or it can plumb the depths of terror and despair. The following are the words of a condemned wretch shivering on the brink of extinction: Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible! _Measure for Measure_ The style lends itself to the serenely ecstatic reverie of the sage: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. _The Tempest_ It can express, on the other hand, the bitterest cynicism: But, man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep. _Measure for Measure_ Or, in prose, Shakespeare can put into words the artless pathos of the humble hostess of the inn: