Sunday #Poetry: Three Witches, from Macbeth

“Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.”
~Joseph Roux

Three Witches – Macbeth
~ William Shakespeare

A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.

                Enter the three Witches.
1 WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

       2 WITCH. Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.

       3 WITCH. Harpier cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!

       1 WITCH. Round about the caldron go;

    In the poison’d entrails throw.—

    Toad, that under cold stone,

    Days and nights has thirty-one;

    Swelter’d venom sleeping got,

    Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!

       ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;

    Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

       2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,

    In the caldron boil and bake;

    Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

    Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

    Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,

    Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—

    For a charm of powerful trouble,

    Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

       ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;

    Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

       3 WITCH. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;

    Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf

    Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;

    Root of hemlock digg’d i the dark;

    Liver of blaspheming Jew;

    Gall of goat, and slips of yew

    Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;

    Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;

    Finger of birth-strangled babe

    Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,—

    Make the gruel thick and slab:

    Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,

    For the ingrediants of our caldron.

       ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;

    Fire burn, and caldron bubble.