Come, thick night, / And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell / That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, / Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark / To cry, “Hold, hold!”

Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:— / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood; / And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature / For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, / Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers / Unmannerly breech’d with gore.

Where we are, / There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, / The nearer bloody.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

This is the very painting of your fear: / This is the air-drawn dagger which you said, / Led you to Duncan.