Monday, July 15, 2013

To Die Is To Become A Kneaded Clod


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 imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.


-- Claudio, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Act 3, Scene 1

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Is "To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice" the source for Robert Frost's "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice"?