Light thickens; and the crow / Makes wing to th’ rooky wood. / Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, / Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

Come, seeling night, / Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, / And with thy bloody and invisible hand / Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond / Which keeps me pale!—

What man dare, I dare: / Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, / The arm’d rhinoceros, or th’ Hyrcan tiger; / Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves / Shall never tremble

Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect; / Whole as the marble, founded as the rock, / As broad and general as the casing air: / But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears.

Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee! / Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; / Thou hast no speculation in those eyes / Which thou dost glare with!

Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ th’ olden time, / Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal; / Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d / Too terrible for the ear: the time has been, / That, when the brains were out, the man would die, / And there an end; but now they rise again, / With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, / And push us from our stools.

Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake / Thy gory locks at me.

we may again / Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights; / Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives, / Do faithful homage, and receive free honours, / All which we pine for now.

Though you untie the winds, and let them fight / Against the churches; though the yesty waves / Confound and swallow navigation up; / Though bladed corn be lodg'd, and trees blown down; / Though castles topple on their warders' heads; / Though palaces and pyramids do slope / Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure / Of nature's germens tumble all together, / Even till destruction sicken, answer me / To what I ask you.

What, will the line stretch out to th' crack of doom?