Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father
By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)F
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Who hath relieved you?
F
Give you good night.[Exit F
M
B
What, is Horatio there?
H
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H
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M
And will not let belief take hold of him,
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That, if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes, and speak to it.
H
B
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we two nights have seen.
H
And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
B
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—
M
M
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H
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? By Heaven, I charge thee, speak.
M
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Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you of it?
H
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
M
H
Such was the very armour he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frowned he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polack on the ice.
’T is strange.
(Re-enter G
I ’ll cross it, though it blast me.—Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me.
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me.
If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing, may avoid,
O, speak!
Or, if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
M
H
B
H
M
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
B
H
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine; and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
M
Some say, that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long.
And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
H
But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.
Break we our watch up; and, by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?
M
Where we shall find him most convenient.[Exeunt.
H
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
In the dead waste and middle of the night,
Been thus encountered: A figure like your father,
Armed at all points, exactly, cap-à-pé,
Appears before them, and, with solemn march,
Goes slow and stately by them. Thrice he walked,
By their oppressed and fear-surprised eyes,
Within his truncheon’s length; whilst they, distilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
And I, with them, the third night kept the watch;
Where, as they had delivered, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes. I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.
H
H
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H
But answer made it none; yet once, methought,
It lifted up its head, and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak;
But, even then, the morning cock crew loud;
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanished from our sight.
H
H
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.
H
Hold you the watch to-night?
A
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A
H
His face?
H
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H
In sorrow than in anger.
H
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Very like. Staid it long?
H
M
H
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A sable silvered.
H
Perchance ’t will walk again.
H
H
I ’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape,
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto concealed this sight,
Let it be tenable in your silence still;
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
Give it an understanding, but no tongue;
I will requite your loves. So, fare you well.
Upon the platform, ’twixt eleven and twelve,
I ’ll visit you.
(Enter G
H
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape,
That I will speak to thee. I ’ll call thee, Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me.
Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell,
Why thy canónized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements! why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again! What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in cómplete steel,
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition,
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
H
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
M
It waves you to a more removed ground!
But do not go with it.
H
H
H
H
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee;
And, for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again;—I ’ll follow it.
H
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff,
That beetles o’er his base into the sea?
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain,
That looks so many fathoms to the sea,
And hears it roar beneath.
H
Go on, I ’ll follow thee.
M
H
H
H
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.—
I say, away;—go on, I ’ll follow thee.[Exeunt G
H
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G
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When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
H
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To what I shall unfold.
H
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Doomed for a certain term to walk the night;
And, for the day, confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature,
Are burned and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres;
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.—List, list, O, list!—
If thou didst ever thy dear father love——
H
G
H
G
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
H
As meditation, or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
G
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
’T is given out, that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.
H
G
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,
(O wicked wit, and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!) won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming virtuous queen.
O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity,
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage; and to decline
Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven;
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
But soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be.—Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man,
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body;
And with a sudden vigor, it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine,
And a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand,
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once despatched;
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled;
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But, howsoever thou pursu’st this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to Heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
The glowworm shows the matin to be near,
And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire;
Adieu, adieu, adieu! remember me.[Exit.
H
And shall I couple hell?—O fie!—Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up!—Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the tables of my memory
I ’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter.