Alan Watts
Our Revels Now Are Ended
The fact that life is transient
Is part of its liveliness
The poets in speaking of the transience of the world always utter their best poetry
You know?
Our revels now are ended
These are actors as I foretold you are all spirits
And are 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 earth itself
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind
We are such stuff as dreams are made of
We are such stuff as dreams are made of
We are such stuff as dreams are made of
And our little life
Is rounded in a sleep
And said so well it doesn't seem so bad after all does it
[Laughs]
You see
There is always, in the poetry of Evanescence a kind of funny nostalgia
Moralists will say
Those lovely lips which you so delighted to kiss today
Will in a few years rot and disclose the grinning teeth of the skull
So what?
The skull says
Lying in the grass
Chattering, finch and water fly are not merrier than I
Here among the flowers I lie laughing everlastingly
No
I may not tell the best
Surely, friends, I could have guessed
Death was but the good King’s jest
It was hid so carefully