>From the Tartan list, by Tom Wells with apologies to the Bard:
To sail, or not to sail--that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous winter Or to take arms against a foot of snow And by shoveling end it. To live, to sail-- Once more--and by a sail to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To live, to sail-- To sail--perchance to cruise: ay, there's the rub, For in that sail of life what joys may come When we have shuffled off this dock line coil, Must give us hope. There's the respect That makes serenity of sailing life. For who would bear the snows and sleet of time, Th' forecaster's wrong, the yard man's contumely The pangs of unrigged spar, the season's delay, The insolvency of wallet, and the spurns That patient merit of th' unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare boomkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a winter life, But that the hope of something after winter, The undiscovered harbour, from whose bars No traveller is spurned, infuses the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make sailors of us all, And thus the winter hour of resolution Is carried o'er in the warming tide of spring, And building seas of great pitch and moment With this regard the currents turn and flow And loose the waves of action. -- Soft you now, The fair Leukothia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sails remembered. _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
