Page:Macbeth (1918) Yale.djvu/85

Macbeth, IV. iii.

For that I saw the tyrant's power a-foot.

Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland

Would create soldiers, make our women fight,

To doff their dire distresses.

Mal. Be 't their comfort,

We are coming thither. Gracious England hath

Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;

An older and a better soldier none

That Christendom gives out.

Ross. Would I could answer

This comfort with the like! But I have words

That would be howl'd out in the desert air,

Where hearing should not latch them.

Macd. What concern they?

The general cause? or is it a fee-grief

Due to some single breast?

Ross. No mind that's honest

But in it shares some woe, though the main part

Pertains to you alone.

Macd. If it be mine,

Keep it not from me; quickly let me have it.

Ross. Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,

Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound

That ever yet they heard.

Macd. Hum! I guess at it.

Ross. Your castle is surpris'd; your wife and babes

Savagely slaughter'd; to relate the manner,

Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer,

To add the death of you.

Mal. Merciful heaven!

 188 doff: put off

192 gives out: shows

194 would: demand to

195 latch: catch

196 fee-grief: private grief

206 quarry: dead bodies (a hunting term)

