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I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven,

Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people,

All swol'n and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,

The mere despair of surgery, he cures,

Hanging a golden stamp about their necks

Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken,

To the succeeding royalty he leaves

The healing benediction. With this strange virtue

He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,

And sundry blessings hang about his throne

That speak him full of grace.

Enter Ross.

MACDUFF. See, who comes here?

MALCOLM.

My countryman, but yet I know him not.

MACDUFF.

My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.

MALCOLM.

I know him now. Good God, betimes remove

The means that makes us strangers!

ROSS.

Sir, amen.

MACDUFF.

Stands Scotland where it did?

ROSS.

Alas, poor country,

Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot

Be call'd our mother, but our grave. Where nothing,

But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air,

Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems

A modern ecstasy. The dead man's knell

Is there scarce ask'd for who, and good men's lives

Expire before the flowers in their caps,

Dying or ere they sicken.

MACDUFF.

O, relation

Too nice, and yet too true!

MALCOLM.

What's the newest grief?

ROSS.

That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker;

Each minute teems a new one.

MACDUFF.

How does my wife?

ROSS.

Why, well.

MACDUFF.

And all my children?

ROSS.

Well too.

MACDUFF.

The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace?

ROSS.

No, they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.

MACDUFF.

Be not a niggard of your speech. How goest?

ROSS.

When I came hither to transport the tidings,

Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumor

Of many worthy fellows that were out,

Which was to my belief witness'd the rather,

For that I saw the tyrant's power afoot.

Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland

Would create soldiers, make our women fight,

To doff their dire distresses.

MALCOLM.

Be't their comfort

We are coming thither. Gracious England hath

Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;

An older and a better soldier none

That Christendom gives out.

ROSS.

Would I could answer

This comfort with the like! But I have words

That would be howl'd out in the desert air,

Where hearing should not latch them.

MACDUFF.

What concern they?

The general cause? Or is it a fee-grief

Due to some single breast?

ROSS.

No mind that's honest

But in it shares some woe, though the main part

Pertains to you alone.

MACDUFF.

If it be mine,

Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.

ROSS.

Let not your ears despise my tongue forever,

Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound

That ever yet they heard.

MACDUFF.

Humh! I guess at it.

ROSS.

Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes

Savagely slaughter'd. To relate the manner

Were, on the quarry of these murther'd deer,

To add the death of you.

MALCOLM.

Merciful heaven!

What, man! Neer pull your hat upon your brows;

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break.

MACDUFF.

My children too?

ROSS.

Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

MACDUFF.

And I must be from thence!

My wife kill'd too?

ROSS.

I have said.

MALCOLM.

Be comforted.

Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,

To cure this deadly grief.

MACDUFF.

He has no children. All my pretty ones?

Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?

What, all my pretty chickens and their dam

At one fell swoop?

MALCOLM.

Dispute it like a man.

MACDUFF.

I shall do so,

But I must also feel it as a man.

I cannot but remember such things were

That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,

And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,

They were all struck for thee! Naught that I am,

Not for their own demerits, but for mine,

Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now!

MALCOLM.

Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief

Convert to anger; blunt