That no compunctious visitings of nature.

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect, and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief!

Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold!-Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
Enter Macbeth.

Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter !
Thy letters have transported me beyond

This ignorant present, and I feel now

The future in the instant.

Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters;-To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,

Your hand, your tongue : look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it. He that's coming
Must be provided for: and you shall put
This night's great business into my despatch;
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

Lady M. He has almost supp'd; Why have you left the chamber?

Macb. Hath he ask'd for me?

Lady M.

Macb.

Know you not, he has ? We will proceed no further in this business; He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.

Lady M.

Was the hope drunk,

Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since ?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

At what it did so freely?
Such I account thy love.

From this time,

Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valour,

As thou art in desire? Would'st thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,

And live a coward in thine own esteem ;

Letting "I dare not " wait upon "I would,"
Like the poor cat i' the adage?—

Macb.

I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none.

Lady M.

Pr'ythee peace :

What beast was it then,

That made you break this enterprize to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place,

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both :
They have made themselves, and that their fitness

now

Does unmake you. I have given suck; and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would,-while it was smiling in my face,-
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,-
And dash'd the brains out,-had I so sworn, as you
Have done to this!

Macb.
Lady M.

If we should fail,-

We fail!

But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep,
(Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey
Soundly invite him,) his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassel so convince,
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only: When in swinish sleep
Their drenchéd natures lie, as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon
His spongy officers; who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell?

Macb.

Bring forth men-children only?

For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males. Will it not be receiv'd,

When we have mark'd with blood those sleepy two
Of his own chamber, and us'd their very daggers,
That they have done 't?

Lady M.

Who dares receive it other,

As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar

Upon his death?

Macb.

I am settled, and bend up

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show:

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

[Exeunt.

ACT II.

SCENE I.-The same. Court within the Castle.

Macb. Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.

Is this a dagger, which I see before me,

Exit Servant.

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch

thee:-

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind; a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still ;
And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood,
Which was not so before.-There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business, which informs.

Thus to mine eyes.-Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offering; and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.-Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my where-about,
And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it.—Whiles I threat, he lives;
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

[A bell rings.

[Exit.

THE TEARFUL CORNET..

TO-DAY, arresting the passers' feet,
A cornet I heard in the hurrying street.