Who Would Fardels Bear

-Something brought To Be or Not To Be to mind, and for a moment there I thought I could still recite half a dozen lines.

The wonder of the internet is that in a matter of seconds you can verify whether this memory or that memory is correct.

I think I dropped about 3 or 4 lines between the 4th and 5th.

Being on the internet, of course I read it from top to bottom; then back from top to bottom. And so forth.

I realized of course that I'd missed more than half of it in the first place. The true heart of the poem is in the lines below; 'the grunt and sweat under a weary life' and 'pangs of despised...' struck a chord.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will