Added 2005-01-18 @ 07:24:47 PM, currently rated 0/5 (0 votes)
A slightly altered version of the opening lines from Macbeth's soliloquy (just prior to murdering the King) from Act II, scene I of Shakespeare's play.
The full text of the 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 marshall'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. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature
seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft
celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd 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 whereabout,
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.
(A bell rings)
I
go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it
is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.