Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/394

 loved and married her; for the clouds of moral disaster which whirl around him cannot conceal from us a fine and noble disposition. It breaks through the gathering obscurity in the delicate considerations which urge him to be a loyal host to Duncan; in the imagination so sensitive to life's fitful fever, so shaken nightly by terrible dreams, as she was too; so quick to mark the objects of Nature, and clothe them in poetic feeling; so melted by tender recollections, and capable of noble regrets that call a pause to ruin just as it breaks, a lull that lasts long enough for us to see how much will be ruined:—

"My way of life Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf: And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not."

What sort of a woman was she, in whose behalf tenderness struggled with despair at last, when he was remembering what a soul had gone delirious, who was too nice for her own fortitude, eminent to be shattered, worse than sick, "as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies"!

"Cure her of that," he replies to the Doctor, but in a tone that repels rather than invites his skill; for those "thick-coming fancies" started from Duncan's room, where he lay looking like her father. Fatal first moment, beyond the reach of medicine! The Doctor has dark misgivings as to the cause of her sleeplessness, though he never heard that midnight cry, "Sleep no