asts with eyeless rage
Catch in their fury and make nothing of;
Strives in his little world of men to outscorn
The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.

In the stormy night on the wild heath the poor old man hears the echo
of his own feelings in the elements; his daughters' ingratitude,
hardness, and cruelty produce a moral disturbance like the
disturbance in Nature; he breaks out:

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks. Rage! Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunder-bolts,
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 ungrateful man....
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire, spout rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters,
I tax you not, 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 will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!

How closely here animate and inanimate Nature are woven together, the
reasoning with the unreasoning. The poet makes the storm, rain,
thunder, and lightning live, and at the same time endues his human
figures with a strength of feeling and passion which gives them
kinship to the elements. In _Othello_, too, there _is_ uproar in
Nature:

Do but stand upon the foaming shore,
The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds....
I never did like molestation view
On the enchafed flood.

but even the unruly elements spare Desdemona:

Tempests themselves, high seas and howling winds,
The gather'd rocks and congregated sands.
Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel--
As having sense of beauty, do omit
Their mortal natures, letting go safely by
The divine Desdemona.

Cassio lays stress upon 'the great contention of the sea and skies';
but when Othello meets Desdemona, he cries:

O my soul's joy!
If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have wakened death!
And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas
Olympus-high, and duck