At the beginning of Act III. in _King Lear_, Kent asks:
Who's there beside foul weather?
_Gentleman_: One minded like the weather, most unquietly.
_Kent_: Where's the King?
_Gent_: Contending with the fretful elements.
Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main,
That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,
Which the impetuous blasts 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.
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