Prospero’s Speech

Our revels now are ended.
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric
of his vision,
The cloud-capped towers,
the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great
Globe itself,
Yes, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial
pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on,
and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

~ Wm Shakespear, The Tempest

My favourite rendition of this speech is the one given by Jonathon Frid on the Dark Shadows album from the early 1970s.