Page 233 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

HAMLET

I will.

GHOST
My hour is almost come
When I to sulph’rous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

HAMLET

Alas, poor ghost.

GHOST

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing [5]
To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET
Speak, I am bound to hear.

GHOST
So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.

HAMLET
What?

GHOST
I am thy father’s spirit,

Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, [10]
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. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word [15]
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 an end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. [20]