Alas, a Lack

         THE FOOL’S PRAYER

The royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,

And to his jester cried: “Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!”


The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before;

They could not see the bitter smile

Behind the painted grin he wore.


He bowed his head, and bent his knee

Upon the monarch’s silken stool;

His pleading voice arose: “O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!


“No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool;

The rod must heal the sin; but, Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!


“’Tis not by guilt, the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

‘Tis by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.


“These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.



“The ill-timed truth we might have kept —

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung!

The words we had not sense to say —

Who knows how grandly it had rung!



“Our faults no tenderness should ask.

The chastening strips must cleanse them all;

But for our blunders — oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall. 


"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool

That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!”


The room was hushed; in silence rose

The King, and sought his gardens cool,

And walked apart, and murmured low,

“Be merciful to me, a fool!”

— Edward Rowland Sill, in A Treasury of the Familiar, Ralph L. Woods, pp. 160-161.



     PROSPERO ENDS THE REVELS

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-capp’d 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.

— William Shakespeare, from The Tempest, in Ibid., p. 215.



         OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing besides remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Ibid., p. 295.


MACBETH LEARNS OF HIS WIFE’S DEATH

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

— William Shakespeare, from Macbeth, in Ibid., p. 295.