But shall be remedied, to your public laws,
At heaviest answer.

Both. 'Tis most nobly spoken.
Alcib. Descend, and keep your words.

The Senators descend, and open the gates.

Enter a Soldier.

Sol. My noble general, Timon is dead; Entombed upon the very hem o' the sea: And on his gravestone this insculpture, which With wax I brought away, whose soft impression Interprets for my poor ignorance.

ALCIBIADES reads.

"Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft : Seek not my name. A plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!

Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate:

Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy gait."

These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs,
Scorn'dst our brain's flow, and those our droplets
which

From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon; of whose memory
Hereafter more.-Bring me into your city,
And I will use the olive with my sword:
Make war breed peace; make peace stint war;
make each

Prescribe to other, as each other's leech-
Let our drums strike.

[Exeunt.

Hor. Tush, tush! 't will not appear.
Ber. Sit down awhile;

And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we two nights have seen.

Hor. Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
Ber. Last night of all,

When yon same star, that's westward from the pole,
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,-
[again!
Mar. Peace, break thee off; look where it comes

Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week: What might be toward, that this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day; Who is 't that can inform me?

That can I;

Our last king,

Hor.
At least, the whisper goes so.
Whose image even but now appeared to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteemed him)
Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a sealed compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,

Did forfeit with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king: which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as by the same cov'nant,
And carriage of the article designed,
His fell to Hamlet.-Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Sharked up a list of landless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in 't: which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us, by strong hand,
And terms compulsatory, those 'foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations;
The source of this our watch; and the chief
head

Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

Ber. I think it be no other, but even so: Well may it sort that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch; so like the king That was, and is, the question of these wars. Hor. A mote it is, to trouble the mind's eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets. As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. And even the like precurse of fierce events (As harbingers preceeding still the fates, And prologue to the omen coming on) Have heaven and earth together démonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen.—

Re-enter Ghost.

But soft; behold! lo, where it comes again!
I'll cross it, though it blast me.-
-Stay illusion!