Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Come unto these yellow sands,

-Ariel

The Tempest                  Act I, Scene ii, Line 375

This is the first line of the song that Ariel is singing as he leads Ferdinand in. It’s only a few lines, so I thought it would be worth our while to have the whole thing. Here you go (with a little of the preceding stage direction):

 

Enter ARIEL, invisible, playing and singing.

FERDINAND following.

ARIEL’S song.

        Come unto these yellow sands,

                And then take hands:

        Court’sied when you have and kist,--

                The wild waves whist,--

        Foot it featly here and there;

        And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.

                Hark, hark!

                        [Burden, dispersedly, within. Bow, wow.]

                The watch-dogs bark:

                        [Burden, dispersedly, within. Bow, wow.]

                Hark, hark! I hear

                The strain of strutting chanticleer.

                        [Cry: Cock-a-diddle-dow.]

 

FERDINAND

Where should this music be: i’the air or the earth?

        It sounds no more:--and sure, it waits upon

        Some god o’ the island. Sitting on a bank,

        Weeping again the king my father’s wrack,

        This music crept by me upon the waters,

        Allaying both their fury and my passion

        With its sweet air: Thence I have follow’d it,

        Or it hath drawn me rather:--but ‘tis gone.

        No, it begins again.

 

ARIEL sings,

        Full fadom five thy father lies;

                Of his bones are coral made;

        Those are pearls that were his eyes;

                Nothing of him that doth fade

        But doth suffer a sea-change 

        Into something rich and strange.

        Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

                [Burden within. Ding-dong]

        Hark! Now I hear them, -Ding-dong, bell.

Okay, I snuck a little extra in there. I wanted to give you the whole song and it’s interrupted in the middle by Ferdinand talking to himself for nine lines. I figured nine more lines wouldn’t kill you.

By the way, sea change, in the fifth line of the second part of the song, is a word (or phrase) used nowadays. It’s defined by Merriam Webster- a marked change: TRANSFORMATION. Merriam Webster, by the way, makes note of the fact that Shakespeare originated this usage in the passage that you just read. So next time someone uses the term sea change you can tell them they’re speaking Shakespeare’s language.

Now this is kind of interesting. I ran into this Sea Change Foundation (and I snipped a copy of their logo to paste here) whilst surfing about.  It's a philanthropic foundation that lends their support to a number of different endeavors. Currently they seem to be working mostly on the issue of Climate Change. Now get this; they have a staff of advisors called the Tempest Advisors Staff. Are we to assume that they know that the name of their foundation originates in Shakespeare's Tempest? It would certainly seem so.