A like fate awaits him and the two
rages commingle in a whirlpool.
They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.
--The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the
porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot
know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls
with that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with
two backs that urged it King Hamlet's ghost could not know of were he not
endowed with knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech (his lean
unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and
ravished, what he would but would not, go with him from Lucrece's
bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole
cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to
hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss
is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished personality,
untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he has revealed. His
beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore's rocks
or what you will, the sea's voice, a voice heard only in the heart of him
who is the substance of his shadow, the son consubstantial with the
father.
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