excerpts
# Macbeth
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak: For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name-- Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like valour's minion carved out his passage Till he faced the slave;
BANQUO
Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root That takes the reason prisoner?
BANQUO
That trusted home Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, Besides the thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray's In deepest consequence. Cousins, a word, I pray you.
Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.
Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it
Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant.
To beguile the time, Look like the time;
BANQUO
Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out. Take thee that too. A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers, Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to in repose!
MACBETH
Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast,--
MACBETH
Whence is that knocking? How is't with me, when every noise appals me? What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas in incarnadine, Making the green one red.
MACBETH
Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived 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.
# sonnet
- 18
- Shall Icompare thee to a summer's day?
- Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
- Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
- And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
- Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
- And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
- And every fair from fair sometime declines,
- By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
- But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
- Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
- Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
- When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
- So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
- So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
# Gasby
In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.