A POET”S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
The poet here is William Shakespeare(1564-1616 ) and the philosophy of life given below has been taken from a very small bunch of his works.
1. Life is 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. Macbeth Act 5, Sc.3
………….
2. All the world is a stage,
And all the
men and merely players:
They have
their exits and entrances;
And one man
in his life plays many parts,
His acts
being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and
puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the
whining school boy, with his satchel,
And shining
morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly
to school. And then the lover
Sighing like
a furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his
mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of
strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,
Jealous in
honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the
bubble reputation
Even in the canon’s
mouth. And then the justice,
In fair
round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes
severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise
saws and modern instances;
And so he
plays his part. The sixth stage shifts
Into the
lean and slipper’s pantaloon,
With spectacles
on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful
hose well sav’d a world too wide
For his
shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning
again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles
in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends
this strange eventful history,
Is second
childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth,
sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. As You Like It, Act II, Sc.VII
…………..
The quality
of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth
as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the
place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth
him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is
mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned
monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre
shows the force of temporal power,
The
attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth
sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is
above the sceptred sway,
It is
enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an
attribute to God himself,
An earthly
power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy
seasons justice. Merchant
of Venice, Act Iv, Sc. I
…….…………..
By a sleep
to say we end
The
heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh
is heir to, ‘t is a consummation
Devoutly to
be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep:
perchance to dream: ay, 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
dispriz’d love, the law’s delay
The
insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient
merit of the of the unworthy takes,
When he
himself might his quietus make
With a bare
bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and
sweat under a weary life,
But that the
dread of something after death,
The
undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller
returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us
rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to
others that we know not of ? Hamlet,
Act III, Sc. I
……………..
Love is not
love
Which alters
when it alteration finds,
Or bends
with the remover to remove:
O, no ! it
is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks
on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the
star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth
is unknown , although his height be taken.. Sonnet CXVI
Love’s not
Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his
bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters
not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it
out even to the edge of doom.
If this be
error and upon me be prov’d
I never
writ, nor no man ever lov’d. Sonnet
CXVI
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10th
July 2022 G.R.Kanwal
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