Nature and Elements

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, And Phoebus ’gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic’d flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise.

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, And Phoebus ’gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic’d flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise.

The beast With many heads butts me away.

The bright day is done, And we are for the dark.

O sun! Burn the great sphere thou mov’st in; darkling stand The varying shore o’ the world.

Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapor sometime like a bear or lion, A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon ’t.

Where’s my serpent of old Nile?

O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!

In nature’s infinite book of secrecy A little I can read.

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!

By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, Whoever knocks!

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog.

Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood.

Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown His cloister’d flight, ere, to black Hecate’s summons The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note.

A falcon, towering in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.

I must become a borrower of the night For a dark hour or twain.

Now o’er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings.

There’s husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out.

The moon is down.

Duncan: This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. Banquo: This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his lov’d mansionry that the heaven’s breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ’d The air is delicate.

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, “Hold, hold!”

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.