IS this a dagger which I see before me, | |
| 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 | 5 |
| A dagger of the mind, a false creation, | |
| Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd 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; | 10 |
| 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: | 15 |
| 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 curtained sleep; witchcraft celebrates | |
| Pale Hecate’s offerings; and withered murder, | 20 |
| Alarumed 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 | 25 |
| The very stones prate of my whereabout, | |
| 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. | |
(A bell rings.) I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. | 30 |
| Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell | |
| That summons thee to heaven or to hell. | |
| |
