 | Lady Macbeth |  |
SCENE V.
Macbeth and Lady.MACBETH.
Be jocund, heart, good things await us still.
'Tis hallow-eve, and I have cast my fortune,
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Bating the vexing present's brief ordeal,
Nought but presumptives of prosperity.
LADY.
Fye; be a man, and leave such idle search
To cred'lous girls and boys professionless.
Or, if you will in signs and omens deal,
Survey the visible portents around.
MACBETH.
He has explained them all. The fiery star
Whose nightly apparition, o'er our heads,
Hath shed, of late, such fear into our hearts,
He has convinced me, by astrology,
Is the celestial swift-moving index
Of our hot-headed and far-follow'd foe.
LADY.
The dreadest prodigy of all the time,
Is the delusion that invests thy mind;
And like a spell, denies thee power to thwart
The rising adversaries of thy throne.
E'en while our castle and its mountain base,
Shake by the multitud'nous tramp of war,
No stir of preparation yet is heard.
All those fierce thanes, that favour'd our bold cause,
Who, roused in time, would still have faithful stood;
By this remissness from allegiance slip,
And make their peace with Malcom as he comes.
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There's not a man of them that shall be spared.
I'll taint the air, of the perfidious towns,
With traitors limbs for these desertions.
LADY.
When?
MACBETH.
Ere Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.
Beneath our walls, the English epicures
Shall leave these curs that want the canine faith,
To crouch before us; but to crouch in vain.
LADY.
Infatuated hold! nor with the vaunt
Of wild mythologies and false predictions,
Think to repel our stern antagonists.
Know you, the watch upon the southern hill
Decerns th'advance of bright-defiling spears,
Glimm'ring behind the dark of Birnam wood,
Like the portentous streamers in the sky?
Awake, my thane, and shake thy drouze away;
Summon the council, and with manly charge,
Inspirit all that with our fortunes rank,
And boldly as you won, maintain the crown.
But I grow faint, and must to bed return.
The fervid malady, kindled by care,
Parching, makes head, and withers me to death.
Damsels, without!—Good night, my dearest lord;
Rouse thee to action.—Here; support me hence.—
Come Hope, to him, though thou hast fled from me.
| Lady Macbeth | |