This Insubstantial Pageant Poem by Harley White

Upon our stage we romp and rage
in Goldilocks's golden cage
amongst colossal cosmic crowd
with spark of liveliness endowed
of pomp and circumstantial fate,
whose worth we underestimate,

in constant discontentment caught
‘and sicklied o'er in cast of thought
so enterprises turn awry',
with not an inkling as to why.
Oh actors in this earthly scene,
what do your frantic antics mean?

‘The heartaches and the thousand shocks
that flesh is heir to' come in flocks,
while nature tenders wherewithal
if we but list her earnest call
in lieu of inner outer din
that sends the senses in a spin.

Our little lives today may throng
‘this insubstantial pageant' long
(to borrow varied Shakespeare tropes) ,
where humans share despair and hopes
on greater globe of bonny blue—
oh rarest planetary hue!

And yet when all ‘our revels end'
this world will leave a stardust blend
behind, ‘to still a beating mind'
of poet bards midst humankind,
a ‘rack', or wisp of cloud, as told
in Prospero's discourse of old;

for sun shall take its final breaths,
as dramatized in stellar deaths,
to be a nebula newborn
celestial heavens to adorn
in evermore creation's dawn—
yea ‘such stuff as dreams are made on'…