CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS; OR, NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE ISLAND. "THOU THOUGHTEST THAT I WAS ALTOGETHER SUCH AN ONE AS THYSELF.' CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS; OR, NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE ISLAND. ['WILL sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin; Touching that other, whom his dam called God. Because to talk about Him, vexes - ha, Could He but know! and time to vex is now, In confidence he drudges at their task, Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! "Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. "Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, "Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish Only she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun), Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, And in her old bounds buried her despair, 'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye And says a plain word when she finds her prize, About their hole He made all these and more, Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else? He could not, Himself, make a second self To be His mate; as well have made Himself. He would not make what He mislikes or slights, eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains: But did, in envy, listlessness, or sport, |