Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murder Sleep, the innocent Sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath!
Balm of hurt minds, chief nourisher in life's feast.
.... Glamis hath murder'd sleep; and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more!
To know my deed,—'twere best not know myself. (Knock.)
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! Ay, would thou couldst.
Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There's nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace, is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
I am in blood,
Steep'd in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
.... But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead
Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fretful fever he sleeps well,
Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him farther!
Prithee, see there! Behold! look! lo! how say you?
If charnel-houses and our graves must send
Those that we bury, back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites.
Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,—
Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform'd
Too terrible for the ear. The times have been
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end. But now! they rise again
With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns,
And push us from our stools.
Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with!