Friday, November 04, 2005

Am not I thy duchess?

"Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory
of green mummy. What's this flesh? a little cruded milk,
fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those
paper prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible,
since ours is to preserve earth-worms. Didst thou ever see
a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world
is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads,
like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge
of the small compass of our prison."

John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi (1614)

No comments: