1 Enter Banquo and Fleance with a torch before him.
2 Let every soldier hew him down a bough, And bear't before him.
3 Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward To what they were before.
4 Thou art so far before, That swiftest wing of recompense is slow To overtake thee.
5 Let's after him, Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome: It is a peerless kinsman.
6 I will not yield, To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
7 We learn no other but the confident tyrant Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure Our setting down before't.
8 Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant There's nothing serious in mortality.
9 As thick as tale Came post with post; and everyone did bear Thy praises in his kingdom's great defence, And pour'd them down before him.
10 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.
11 Mine eyes are made the fools o the other senses, Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still; And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood, Which was not so before.
12 What I am truly, Is thine and my poor country's to command: Whither, indeed, before thy here-approach, Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men, Already at a point, was setting forth.
13 I think, withal, There would be hands uplifted in my right; And here, from gracious England, have I offer Of goodly thousands: but, for all this, When I shall tread upon the tyrant's head, Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country Shall have more vices than it had before, More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever, By him that shall succeed.