still;
And on thy blade and handle, 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 curtained sleeper; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and withered murder
Alarmed 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 whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. While 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!"_

After the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is constantly haunted with the
ghost of her victim, and in midnight hours, sick at soul, walks in her
sleep, talking of her bloody deed:

_"Out damned spot! out I say!
Here's the smell of the blood still;
All the perfumes of Arabia
Will not sweeten this little hand!"_

And then retiring to her purple couch, amidst the cries of her waiting
woman, she dies with insane groans echoing through her castle halls.

Macbeth, the pliant, cowardly, ambitious tool of his wicked wife, is at
last surrounded by Macduff and his soldiers, and informed that his lady is
dead.

And then soliloquizing on time and life, he utters these philosophic
phrases:

_"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word;
To-morrow; and to-morrow, and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale,
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury--
Signifying nothing!"_

And then, in the forest in front of the castle Macbeth is at last brought
to bay and killed by Macduff; but the murderer of Duncan, brave to the
last, exclaims:

_"Yet I will try the last; before my body
I throw my warlike shield; lay on Macduff,