1
" O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue. "
― William Shakespeare , Hamlet
2
" MortalityOh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,He passes from life to his rest in the grave.The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,Be scattered around, and together be laid;And the young and the old, the low and the high,Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.'Tis the wink of an eye - 'tis the draught of a breath -From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroudOh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? "
4
" Farewell, ungrateful traitor,
Farewell, my perjured swain;
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.
'Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain;
But when we love you leave us
To rail at you in vain.
Before we have descried it
There is no bliss beside it,
But she that once has tried it
Will never love again.
The passion we pretended
Was only to obtain,
But when the charm is ended
The charmer you disdain.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure
When living is a pain. "
― John Dryden , The Spanish Friar: or, The Double Discovery
