I'm In My Own Way, I & II - Reprise

King Lear and The Fool In The Storm

William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Oxford Shakespeare. 1914.

King Lear

Act III. Scene II.


Another Part of the Heath. Storm still.


Enter LEAR and Fool.

Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man!

Fool. O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters’ blessing; here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.

Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription: then, let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join’d
Your high-engender’d battles ’gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! ’tis foul.

Fool. He that has a house to put his head in has a good head-piece.
The cod-piece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many.
The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make,
Shall of a corn cry woe,
And turn his sleep to wake.

For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.


Here is something...two poems I wrote twenty-two months apart, both with the same title. I have posted each poem before.

I'm In My Own Way

If I shed my skin
Like the garden snake I saw,
I would know better
Than to build cartoons of us.

I would then know who you are.

If I dropped my eyes,
Got brave like angels can be,
I would see better
And stop making most things up.

I would then know who I am.

November 5, 2008 9:35 AM

I'm In My Own Way

You have given me
a real break, a fine, fine gift,
yes, one for the books,
and me, the guy who
stands here all so negative
in spite of your love.

I feel like a tired
swimmer struggling so toward
the surface of things.

September 2, 2010 9:38 AM