Shakespeare.
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MACBETH.
ACT II.—SCENE I.
MACBETH. Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee—
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from a heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going,
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses
Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still;
And on thy blade, and dudgeon, 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 curtain'd sleep: witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings: and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, toward 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 where-about,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it.—Whilst I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
[A bell rings.
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. [Exit.
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SCENE II.—The same.
Enter Lady Macbeth.