Death and Mourning

Finger of birth-strangled babe, Ditch-deliver’d by a drab.

Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing Can touch him further.

Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit.

Had I but died an hour before this chance I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant, There’s nothing serious in mortality, All is but toys; renown and grace is dead, The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of.

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence The life o’ the building!

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.

Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!

It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern’st good-night.

The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly; if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come.

Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d, As ’twere a careless trifle.

The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young, Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Vex not his ghost: O! let him pass; he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer.

And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button.

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones: Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so That heaven’s vaults should crack. She’s gone forever.

Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.

Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.

A forted residence ’gainst the tooth of time And razure of oblivion.

The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison’d in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world.

If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in my arms.

The sense of death is most in apprehension, And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.

Be absolute for death.