Lyrics

Stay with me, Ariel, while I pack, and with your first free act Delight my leaving; share my resigning thoughts As you have served my revelling wishes: then, brave spirit, Ages to you of song and daring, and to me Briefly, Milan, then earth. In all, things have turned out better Than I once expected or ever deserved; I am glad that I did not recover my dukedom till I do not want it; I am glad that Miranda No longer pays me any attention; I am glad I have freed you, So at last I can really beliеve I shall die. For under your influеnce, death is inconceivable: On walks through winter woods, a bird's dry carcass Agitates the retina with novel images, A stranger's quiet collapse in a noisy street Is the beginning of much lively speculation, And every time some dear flesh disappears What is real is the arriving grief; thanks to your service, The lonely and unhappy are very much alive. But now all these heavy books are no use to me any more, for Where I go, words carry no weight: it is best, Then, I surrender their fascinating counsel To the silent dissolution of the sea Which misuses nothing because it values nothing; Whereas man overvalues everything Yet, when he learns the price is pegged to his valuation, Complains bitterly he is being ruined which, of course, he is. So kings find it odd that they should have a million subjects Yet share in the thoughts of none, and seducers Are sincerely puzzled at being unable to love What they are bale to possess; so, long ago, In an open boat, I wept at giving a city, Common warmth and touching substance, for a gift In dealing with shadows. If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows all too well that it has got away with nothing: The child runs out to play in the garden, convinced That the furniture will still go on with its thinking lesson, Who, fifty years later, if he plays at all, Will first ask its kind permission to be excused. When I woke into my life, a sobbing dwarf Whom giants served only as they pleased, I was not whatI seemed; Beyond their busy backs I made a magic To ride away from a father's imperfect justice, Take vengeance on the Romans for their grammar, Usurp the popular earth and blot forever The gross insult of being a mere one among many: Now, Ariel, I am that I am, your late and lonely master, Who knows now what magic is;-the power to enchant That comes from disillusion. What the books can teach one Is that most desires end up in stinking ponds, But we only have to learn to sit still and give no orders, To make you offer us your echo and your mirror; We only have to believe you, then you dare not lie; To ask for nothing, and at once from your calm eyes, With their lucid proof of apprehension and disorder, All we are not stares back at what we are. For all things, In your company, can be themselves: historic deeds Drop their hauteur and speak of shabby childhoods When all they longed for was to join in the gang of doubts Who so tormented them; sullen diseases Forget their dreadful appearance and make silly jokes; Thick-headed goodness for once is not a bore. No one but you had sufficient audacity and eyesight To find those clearings where the shy humiliations Gambol on sunny afternoons, the waterhole to which The scarred rogue sorrow comes quietly in the small hours: And no one but you is reliably informative on hell; As you whistle and skip past, the poisonous Resentments scuttle over your unrevolted feet, And even the uncontrollable vertigo, Because it can scent no shame, is unobliged to strike. Could he but once see Nature as In truth she is for ever, What oncer would not fall in love? Hold up your mirror, boy, to do Your vulgar friends this favor: One peep, though, will be quite enough; To those who are not true, A statue with no figleaf has A pornographic flavor. Inform my hot heart straight away Its treasure loves another, But turn to neutral topics then, Such as the pictures in this room, Religion or the Weather; Pure scholarship in Where and When, How Often and With Whom, Is not for Passion that must play The Jolly Elder Brother. Be frank about our heathen foe, For Rome will be a goner If you soft-pedal the loud beast; Describe in plain four-letter words This dragon that's upon her: But should our beggars ask the cost, Just whistle like the birds; Dare even Pope or Caesar know The price of faith and honour? Today I am free and no longer need your freedom; You, I suppose, will be off now to look for likely victims; Crowds chasing ankles, lone men stalking glory, Some feverish young rebel among amiable flowers In consultation with his handsome envy, A punctual plump judge, a fly-weight hermit in a dream Of gardens that is forever outside-- To lead absurdly by their self-important noses. Are you malicious by nature? I don't know. Perhaps only incapable of doing nothing or of Being by yourself, and, for all your wry faces May secretly be anxious and miserable without A master to need you for the work you need. Are all your tricks a test? If so, I hope you find, next time. Someone in whom you cannot spot the weakness Though which you will corrupt him with your charm. Mine you did And me you have: Thanks yo us both, I have broken Both of the promises I made as an apprentice;- To hate nothing and to ask nothing for its love, All by myself I tempted Antonio into treason; However that could be cleared up; both of us know That both were in the wrong, and neither need be sorry: But Caliban remains my impervious disgrace. We did it, Ariel, between us; you found on me a wish For absolute devotion; result--his wreck That sprawls in the weeds and will not be repaired: My dignity discouraged by a pupil's curse, I shall go knowing and incompetent into my grave. The extravagant children, who lately swaggered Out of the sea like gods, have, I think, been soundly hunted By their own devils into their human selves: To all, then, but me, their pardons. Alonso's heaviness Is lost, and weak Sebastian will be patient In future with his slothful conscience--after all, it pays; Stephano is contracted to his belly, a minor But prosperous kingdom; stale Trinculo receives. Gratis, a whole fresh repertoire of stories, and Our younger generation its independent joy. Their eyes are big and blue with love; its lightning Makes us even look new: yes, today it all looks so easy. Will Ferdinand be as fond of a Miranda Familiar as a stocking? Will a Miranda who is No longer a silly lovesick little goose, When Ferdinand and his brave world are her profession, Go into raptures over existing at all? Possibly I over-estimate their difficulties; Just the same, I am very glad I shall never Be twenty and have to go through the business again, The hours of fuss and fury, the conceit, the expense. Sing first that green remote Cockagne Where whiskey-rivers run, And every gorgeous number may Be laid by anyone; For medicine and rhetoric Lie mouldering on shelves, While sad young dogs and stomach-aches Love no one but themselves, Tell then of witty angels who Come only to the beasts, Of Heirs Apparent who prefer Low dives to formal feasts; For shameless Insecurity Prays for a boot to lick, And many a sore bottom finds A sorer one to kick. Wind up, though, on a moral note;- That Glory will go bang, Schoolchildren shall co-operate, And honest rogues must hang; Because our sound committee man Has murder in his heart: But should you catch a living eye, Just wink as you depart. Now our partnership is dissolved, I feel so peculiar: As if I had been on a drunk since I was born And suddenly no, and for the first time, am cold sober, With all my unanswered wishes and unwashed days Stacked up all around my life; as if through the ages I had dreamed About some tremendous journey I was taking, Sketching imaginary landscapes, chasms and cities, Cold walls, hot spaces, wild mouths, defeated backs, Jotting down fictional noted on secrets overheard In theatres and privies, banks and mountain inns, And now, in my old age, I wake, and this journey really exists, And I actually have to take it, inch by inch, Alone and on foot, without a cent in my pocket, Through a universe where time is not foreshortened, No animals talk, and there is neither floating nor flying. When I am safely home, oceans away in Milan, and Realize once and for all I shall never see you again, Over there maybe, it won't seem quite so dreadful Not to be interesting any more, but an old man Just like other old men, with eyes that water Easily in the wind, and a head that nods to the sunshine, Forgetful, maladroit, a little grubby, And to like it. When the servants settle me into a chair In some well-sheltered corner of the garden, And arrange my muffler and rugs, shall I ever be able To stop myself from telling them what I am doing,- Sailing alone, out over seventy thousand fathoms-? Yet if I speak, I shall sink without a sound Into unmeaning abysses. Can I learn to suffer Without saying something ironic or funny On suffering? I never suspected the way of truth Was a way of silence where affectionate chat Is but a robbers' ambush and even good music In shocking taste; and you, of course, never told me. If I peg away at it honestly every moment, And have luck, perhaps by the time death pounces His stumping question, I shall just be getting to know The difference between moonshine and daylight.... I see you starting to fidget. I forgot. To you That doesn't matter. My dear, here comes Gonzalo With a solemn face to fetch me. O Ariel, Ariel, How I shall miss you. Enjoy your element. Good-bye. Sing, Ariel, sing, Sweetly, dangrously, Out of the sour And shiftless water, Lucidly out Of the dozing tree, Embracing, rebuking The raging heart With a smoother song Than this rough world, Unfeeling god. O brilliantly, lightly, Of separation, Of bodies and death, Unanxious one, sing To man, meaning me, As now, meaning always, In love or out, Whatever that mean, Trembling he takes The silent passage Into discomfort.