Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare · The Tempest
Comfort & remembrance
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,”
- Author
- William Shakespeare
- Work
- The Tempest
- Found in
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
- Year
- 1623
- Chapter / part
- Act IV, Scene 1
- Length
- 80 words
- Source
- Project Gutenberg eBook #100
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. William Shakespeare died in 1616, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1623. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Related passages
Under the wide and starry skyDig the grave and let me lie:Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:Here he lies where he long’d to be;Home is the sailor, home from sea,And the hunter home from the hill.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Take him and cut him out in little stars,And he will make the face of heaven so fineThat all the world will be in love with night,And pay no worship to the garish sun.
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