SOLILOQUY OF HAMLET'S UNCLE.
Oh! my offence is rank; it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal, eldest curse upon 't,
A brother's murder! Pray I cannot,
Though inclination be as sharp as 't will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this curséd hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood;
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy,
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer, but this twofold force,—
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past.—But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? "Forgive me my foul murder!"
That cannot be; since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder,—
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned, and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft 't is seen, the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 't is not so above;
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it, when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom, black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engag'd! Help, angels! make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart, with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
All may be well.
Shakespeare.
CCXLIII.
PERSEVERANCE KEEPS HONOR BRIGHT.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done, Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright. To have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For Honor travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For Emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost;—
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun and trampled on. Then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours:
For Time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand;
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps-in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing. O, let not Virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, alacrity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating Time.
One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin,—
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past;
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
More land than gilt o'erdusted.
The present eye praises the present object:
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye
Than what not stirs: The cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet it may again,
If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent;
Whose glorious deeds, did but in these fields of late,
Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves,
And drave great Mars to faction.
Shakespeare.
CCXLIV.
MACBETH'S SOLILOQUY.
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 the 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.—Know, o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep; now Witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered Murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my where-about,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives;
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. [A bell rings.]
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell,
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
Shakespeare.