How superbly is the effect of this description and its symbolic significance again enforced by the words of Rosse in a subsequent scene:
By the clock ’tis day
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp:
Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?
The “night’s predominance” fit emblem of the deeds of this “woful time” prevails to the end: and as Macbeth advances in his terrible crusade his soul becomes attuned to its surroundings, and on the eve of Banquo’s murder he calls darkness to his aid. “The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day” when he utters that terrible invocation:
Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;
And, with thy bloody and invisible hand,