Which gives the stern’st good-night.

And when the murder has been committed, Nature, through the lips of Lenox, makes her own contribution to the picture:

The night has been unruly: where we lay,

Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,

Lamentings heard i’ the air: strange screams of death

And, prophesying with accents terrible

Of dire combustion and confused events,

New hatched to the woful time, the obscure bird

Clamour’d the live-long night: some say the earth

Was feverous and did shake.