with inspiration from
jen at
{the cottage nest}...and wazzizname:
"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: To die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to? 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep
To sleep, perchance to dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the Lawes delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would there fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Countrey from whose Bourne
No traveller returns, puzels the will
And makes us rather beare those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o're with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turne away,
And lose the name of Action.—Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sinnes remembered."
time to shed the melancholy cloak of winter and dream on!
