The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man 65
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys[a 1] of the body;
And with a sudden vigour[b 1] it doth posset[a 2]
And curd, like eager[b 2] droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine; 70
And a most instant[b 3] tetter bark'd[a 3] about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
Of life, of crown, of queen,[a 4] at once dispatch'd;[b 4] 75
Cut off even in the blossoms[b 5] of my sin,
Unhousel'd,[b 6] disappointed,[b 7] unaneled;[b 8]
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:
Oh, horrible! Oh, horrible! most horrible![b 9] 80
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
- ↑ 68. vigour] Staunton proposed rigour.
- ↑ 69. eager] Ff aygre, Cotgrave has "Aigre: Eagre, sharpe, tart, biting, sower."
- ↑ 71. instant] instantaneous, as in II. ii. 548.
- ↑ 75. dispatch'd] deprived, which is the reading of Q 1.
- ↑ 76. blossoms] White reads blossom, which Dyce had suggested; but compare Winter's Tale, V. ii. 135: "the blossoms of their fortune."
- ↑ 77. Unhousel'd] without receiving the eucharist (Old English husel). Tyrwhitt compares Morte Darthur, xxi. 12 (Lancelot dying): "So when he was howselyd and anelyd."
- ↑ 77. disappointed] Pope read unanointed; Theobald, unappointed, comparing Measure for Measure, III. i. 60, Boucher conjectures unassoiled, unabsolved. The meaning is, without equipment for the last journey.
- ↑ 77. unaneled] unanointed with extreme unction. See quotation from Morte Darthur above. Pope mistook it for having no knell rung.
- ↑ 80.] Given to Hamlet by several editors. Garrick, as Hamlet, pronounced this line; so does Sir H. Irving. Clarke observes that triple iteration is characteristic of the Ghost's diction.
