Prince Hamlet Shakespeare's work act v scene i

HAMLET 

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr’d in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss’d I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning-quite chop-fall’n. Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. HORATIO What’s that, my lord? HAMLET Dost thou think Alexander look’d a’ this fashion i’ th’ earth? HORATIO E’en so. HAMLET And smelt so? Pah! Puts down the skull. HORATIO E’en so, my lord. HAMLET To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till ’a find it stopping a bunghole? HORATIO ’Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so. HAMLET No, faith, not a jot, but to follow him thither with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O that that earth which kept the world in awe. Should patch a wall t’ expel the winter’s flaw! But soft, but soft awhile, here comes the king. 

Prince Hamlet Shakespeare's work act v scene i musee-delacroix.fr