 | Lady Macbeth |  |
SCENE III.
Macbeth and Baudron.MACBETH.
Nearer Baudron.—People say that Nature
Hath gifted thee with perspicatious sight,
To ken beyond our general human range,
The viewless mechanism of the world;
That thou hast held familiar colloquy,
With beings to our sense impalpable;
And learnt from them the index of events,
Far in the future and unknown of time.
I would discourse at large on this awhile,
And feed my fancy with thy mystic wisdom.
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Your majesty confers great honour on me,
But age, dread sir, is all my faculty;
And that strange skill which rumour so proclaims,
Is but the art of noting, meeting things,
Fruit of a long variegated life.
There is in nature, sir, no accidents.
The boundless providential enginry
Still moves harmonious; and the augur-signs
Are but remote accordant parts, discern'd
Without the wedded wheels and linking chains.
For all the motions, in the frame of time,
Proceed combin'd, and rise from one great spring.
MACBETH.
What are those influential energies,
In their own nature substanceless, that take
Corporeal semblance;—Fate's dread oracles,
Who by the heralding of things to be,
Create the purposes that give them birth?
BAUDRON.
These, sir, elude the grasp of our gross wits:
They are like that occult intelligence
Which stirs between the ocean and the moon,
Known to exist by its effects alone.
MACBETH.
My dearest love! but wherefore come you here?
Go to thy couch again. Sweet, how is this
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Let me take from thee that sepulchral omen.
BAUDRON.
Whom did your majesty just now address?
MACBETH.
Saw you it not?
BAUDRON.
Saw what, my gracious lord?
MACBETH.
A gliding apparition of the queen.
This is the second time it hath appear'd:
Last night it came dress'd in her chamber robes,
And gazing mournful on me, pass'd away;
But now it show'd the grim gaunt look of death,
And vanish'd, mantled in a winding sheet.
BAUDRON.
God save her majesty—
MACBETH.
What moves thee, Baudron?
Such metaphysical phenomenæ
Are sights to which my eyes have grown accustom'd;
And I would know what is't that they foretoken.
BAUDRON.
Alas! the visions that amaze your highness,
Are the conceits of melancholy lymphs,
Mingled by nature in the glowing brain.
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But what do they portend? Interpret this:
Say wherefore twice hath the wan effigy
Of my perturbed, care-afflicted queen,
Risen to view a pale untimely ghost.
BAUDRON.
It was her wraith. The unknown minister
Who gives presentiment of coming woe,
Alas! forewarns that she is doom'd to die.
If it come thrice, call holy men around,
And let your wordly legacies be made;
For then the warding angel of your life
Resigns the keep to all subduing death.
The same day's sun that sees the queen a corpse,
O mighty king! shall never set to thee.
| Lady Macbeth | |