Lady Macbeth says:
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman
Which gives the stern'st good-night.
Lenox describes this night:
The night has been unruly: where we lay
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion and confus'd events,
New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird
Clamour'd the live-long night: some say, the earth
Was feverish and did shake.
and later on, an old man says:
Three score and ten I can remember well;
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.
Rosse answers him:
Ah, good father,
Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threaten his bloody stage; by the clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is't night's predominance or the day's shame
That darkness does the-face of earth entomb
When living light should kiss it?
The whole play is a thrilling expression of the sympathy for Nature
which attributes its own feelings to her--a human shudder in presence
of the wicked--a human horror of crime, most thrilling of all in
Macbeth's words:
Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale.
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