CLO. 
     So sleep; sleep fast:  and sleep away those two
     Night-potions, and the waking dream between
     Which dream thou must believe; and, if to see
     Again, poor Segismund! that dream must be.—­
     And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives,
     Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake,
     How if our waking life, like that of sleep,
     Be all a dream in that eternal life
     To which we wake not till we sleep in death? 
     How if, I say, the senses we now trust
     For date of sensible comparison,—­
     Ay, ev’n the Reason’s self that dates with them,
     Should be in essence or intensity
     Hereafter so transcended, and awake
     To a perceptive subtlety so keen
     As to confess themselves befool’d before,
     In all that now they will avouch for most? 
     One man—­like this—­but only so much longer
     As life is longer than a summer’s day,
     Believed himself a king upon his throne,
     And play’d at hazard with his fellows’ lives,
     Who cheaply dream’d away their lives to him. 
     The sailor dream’d of tossing on the flood: 
     The soldier of his laurels grown in blood: 
     The lover of the beauty that he knew
     Must yet dissolve to dusty residue: 
     The merchant and the miser of his bags
     Of finger’d gold; the beggar of his rags: 
     And all this stage of earth on which we seem
     Such busy actors, and the parts we play’d,
     Substantial as the shadow of a shade,
     And Dreaming but a dream within a dream!

     Fife. 
     Was it not said, sir,
     By some philosopher as yet unborn,
     That any chimney-sweep who for twelve hours
     Dreams himself king is happy as the king
     Who dreams himself twelve hours a chimney-sweep?

     CLO. 
     A theme indeed for wiser heads than yours
     To moralize upon—­How came you here?—­

     Fife. 
     Not of my own will, I assure you, sir. 
     No matter for myself:  but I would know
     About my mistress—­I mean, master—­

     CLO. 
     Oh, Now I remember—­Well, your master-mistress
     Is well, and deftly on its errand speeds,
     As you shall—­if you can but hold your tongue. 
     Can you?

     Fife. 
     I’d rather be at home again.

     CLO. 
     Where you shall be the quicker if while here
     You can keep silence.

     Fife. 
     I may whistle, then? 
     Which by the virtue of my name I do,
     And also as a reasonable test
     Of waking sanity—­

     CLO. 
     Well, whistle then;
     And for another reason you forgot,
     That while you whistle, you can chatter not. 
     Only remember—­if you quit this pass—­

     Fife. 
     (His rhymes are out, or he had call’d it spot)—­