The serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown.

Murder most foul, as in the best it is; / But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

Do not forget. This visitation / Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

If it assume my noble father’s person, / I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape / And bid me hold my peace.

My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well; / I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! / Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us! / Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d, / 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 am thy father’s spirit, / Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, / And for the day confin’d to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purg’d away.

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, / Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d; / No reckoning made, but sent to my account / With all my imperfections on my head.

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 porpentine.

So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d, / Will sate itself in a celestial bed / And prey on garbage.