"Caliban upon Setebos"

9 January 2019:

"'...Hath spied an icy fish
That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived,
And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine
O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid,
A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave;
Only, she ever sickened, found repulse
At the other kind of water, not her life,
(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun)
Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe,
And in her old bounds buried her despair,
Hating and loving warmth alike: so He." --Robert Browning, "Caliban upon Setebos"

Spent some time with this poem today, in anticipation of teaching it in a few weeks. The image above, which comes fairly early in the poem, really stuck out to me, illustrating that Caliban, though in so many ways limited and beastly, has a way with words.