The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,

Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was sick almost to dooms-day with eclipse. 36—i. 1.

198.

Prodigies.

There is one within,

Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;

And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead:
Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,

In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol:

The noise of battle hurtled in the air,

Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan;
And ghosts did shriek, and squeal about the streets.

199.

The same.

The people fear me; for they do observe

29-ii. 2.

Unfather'd heirs, and loathly birds of nature:
The seasons change their manners, as the year

Had found some months asleep, and leap'd them over.
The river hath thrice flow'd, no ebb between:
And the old folk, time's doting chronicles,

Say, it did so, a little time before

That our great grandsire, Edward, sick'd and died.

19-iv. 4.

The night has been unruly: Where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say,

All the editions read, "As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood," &c., which has caused all the commentators to conclude something preceding has been lost; but I am of a different opinion: by reading "Stars fought with trains of fire and dews of blood," &c., the sense is complete, and in accordance with the prodigy mentioned in Julius Cæsar, 29-ii. 2, "Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds," &c. See also, "They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera."-Judges v. 20.

Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death;

And prophesying, with accents terrible,

Of dire combustion, and confused events,

New hatch'd to the woeful time. The obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night: some say, the earth Was feverous, and did shake.

They say, five moons were seen to-night:
Four fixed; and the fifth did whirl about
The other four, in wond'rous motion.

15-ii. 3.

16-iv. 2.

Threescore and ten I can remember well:
Within the volume of which time, I have seen
Hours dreadful, and things strange; but this sore
night

Hath trifled former knowings.

On Tuesday last,

A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl, hawk'd at, and kill'd. And Duncan's horses (a thing most strange and certain),

Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make War with mankind.

'Tis said, they eat each other.

15-ii. 4.

The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd,
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth,
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change;
Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap,—
The one, in fear to lose what they enjoy,
The other, to enjoy by rage and war.

G. I cannot blame him: at my nativity, The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,

17-ii. 4.

Of burning cressets; and, at my birth,

The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shak'd like a coward.

H.

Why, so it would have done At the same season, if your mother's cat had But kitten'd, though yourself had ne'er been born.

Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of cholic pinch'd and vex'd
By the imprisoning of unruly wind

Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down
Steeples, and moss-grown towers. At your birth,
Our grandam earth, having this distemperature,
In passion shook.

18-iii. 1.

From whence 't is nourish'd: The fire i' the flint
Shews not, till it be struck; our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies
Each bound it chafes.

27-i. 1.

O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!

207.

Music.

Music hark!

20-i. Chorus.

Nothing is good, I see, without respect;

Methinks, it sounds much sweeter than by day..

Silence bestows that virtue on it.

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and, I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.

How many things by seasons season'd are
To their right praise and true perfection!

9-v. 1.

Do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
any air of music touch their ears,

Or

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,

By the sweet power of music: Therefore, the poet Did feign, that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;

Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature":
The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

9-v. 1.

This music crept by me upon the waters;
Allaying both their fury, and my passion,
With its sweet air.

210.

The same.

Music do I hear?

1-i. 2.

Ha, ha! keep time :-How sour sweet music is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear,
To check time broke in a disorder'd string;
But, for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain-tops, that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music, plants, and flowers,
Ever sprung; as sun, and showers,
There had been a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,

Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art;

Killing care, and grief of heart,
Fall asleep, or, hearing, die.

25-iii. 1.

For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews;
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

2-iii. 2.

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.-
That strain again; it had a dying fall :
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.

4-i. 1.

How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

9-v. 1.