“Comfort, my sovereign! gracious Henry, comfort!”
But the King, likening his message to the ill-boding note of a raven, replies:—
“What, doth my lord of Suffolk comfort me?
Came he right now to sing a raven’s note,
Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers;
And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,
By crying comfort from a hollow breast,
Can chase away the first-conceived sound?”
Henry VI. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 2.
After Balthazar has sung his well-known song, “Sigh no more, ladies,” (Much Ado, Act ii. Sc. 3,) Benedick observes to himself, “An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it.”