The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.”
On this passage Johnson remarks: “The messenger, says the servant, had hardly breath to make up his message; to which the lady answers mentally, that he may well want breath; such a message would add hoarseness to the raven. That even the bird whose harsh voice is accustomed to predict calamities, could not croak the entrance of Duncan but in a note of unwonted harshness.”
The preference which the raven evinces for “sickly prey,” or carrion, is not unnoticed by the poet:—
“Now powers from home, and discontents at home,
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,
As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast,
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.”
King John, Act iv. Sc. 3.