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I will not choose what many men desire,
Because I will not jump with common spirits,
And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.

For all the rest,

They'll take suggestion, as a cat laps milk;
They'll tell the clock to any business that
We say befits the hour.

'Twas you incens'd the rabble:
Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth,
As I can of those mysteries which heaven
Will not have earth to know.

You have many enemies, that know not Why they are so, but, like to village curs, Bark when their fellows do.

The people cry, you mock'd them; and, of late, When corn was given them gratis, you repin'd; Scandal'd the suppliants for the people; call'd them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.

MODESTY.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes :
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd;
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent,

In the modesty of fearful duty, I read as much, as from the rattling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence.

MOONLIGHT.

This night, methinks, is but the day-light sick,
It looks a little paler; 'tis a day,

Such as the day is when the sun is hid.

How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony.

In such a night, did

Young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well;
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,
And ne'er a true one.

The moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:

And, through this distemperature, we see
The seasons alter.

MORNING.

The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,
Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's path, and Titan's firy wheels.

But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.

See, how the morning opes her golden gates,
And takes her farewell of the glorious sun!
How well resembles it the prime of youth,
Trimm'd like a younker, prancing to his love!

The silent hours steal on,
And flaky darkness breaks within the east.

Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

This morning, like the spirit of a youth
That means to be of note, begins betimes.

The glow-worm shews the matin to be near
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks !
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

The wolves have prey'd; and look, the gentle day,
Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about

Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.

For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;

At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to church-yards: damned spirits all,
That in cross-ways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone.

When the searching eye of heaven is hid
Behind the globe, and lights the lower world,
Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen,
In murders, and in outrage, bloody here;
But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,
And darts his light through every guilty hole,
Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,

The cloak of night being pluck'd from off their backs,
Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves.

The sun is in the heaven; and the proud day,
Attended with the pleasures of the world,
Is all too wanton.

MURDER.

Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

Ere the bat hath flown

His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecat's summons,
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
Hath
rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.

Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!

That my
keen knife see not the wound it makes;
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, hold, hold!

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.

One cry'd God bless us, and, Amen, the other;
As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands,
Listening their fear. I could not say, amen,
When they did say, God bless us.

The tyrannous and bloody act is done;
The most arch deed of piteous massacre,
That ever yet this land was guilty of.
Dighton, and Forrest, whom I did suborn
To do this piece of ruthless butchery,
Albeit they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs,
Melting with tenderness, and mild compassion,
Wept like two children, in their death's sad story.

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man,

That ever lived in the tide of times.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnardine,

Making the green one, red,

It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood : Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs, and understood relations, have

By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth The secret'st man of blood.

If the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the lie-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,-
We'd jump the life to come. But, in these cases,
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips.

The great King of kings

Hath in the table of his law commanded,

That thou shalt do no murder; Wilt thou then
Spurn at his edict, and fulfil a man's.

The bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan: for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

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