Whether ‘tis cleaner on the page to suffer
The restless resharpening of soft pencils,
Or to wipe hands accross seas of graphite powder,
And by rubbing them out smudge them? To smudge, to erase,
No more; and by to erase say we end
The cross hatching, and the thousand scrawled lines
That pencil is heir to: ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To smudge, to erase;
To erase, perchance to highlight – ay, there’s the rub:
For in that erasure of graphite what shapes may come,
When we have sharpened off this wooded casing,
Must give us pause – there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so sharp a pencil.