Am I this patient log-man.

MIRANDA.

Do you love me?

FERDINAND.

O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound
And crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true: if hollowly, invert
What best is boded me, to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
Do love, prize, honor you.

MIRANDA.

I am a fool,
To weep at what I am glad of.

FERDINAND.

Wherefore weep you

MIRANDA.

At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take,
What I shall die to want--But this is trifling:
And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning;
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
Whether you will or no!

FERDINAND.

My mistress, dearest!
And I thus humble ever.

MIRANDA.

My husband, then?

FERDINAND.

Ay, with a heart as willing,
As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand.

MIRANDA.

And mine with my heart in it. And now farewell
Till half an hour hence.

As Miranda, being what she is, could only have had a Ferdinand for a
lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have had with
propriety no other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly
claims her as "a thread of his own life--nay, that for which he lives."
Prospero, with his magical powers, his superhuman wisdom, his moral
worth and grandeur, and his kingly dignity, is one of the most sublime
visions that ever swept with ample robes, pale brow, and sceptred hand,
before the eye of fancy. He controls the invisible world, and works
through the agency of spirits: not by any evil and forbidden compact,
but solely by superior might of intellect--by potent spells gathered
from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with
his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and
astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare's age, as can well be imagin