I say, away!

Go on; I'll follow thee.

[Breaking from them.

Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet. Horatio and Marcellus follow slowly.

Scene Fourth.—ANOTHER PART of the Platform.

[Enter Ghost and Hamlet.

Hamlet.

Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak; I'll go no further.

My hour is almost come,

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames

Must render up myself.

Alas! poor ghost!

Hamlet.

Ghost.

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing

To what I shall unfold.

Hamlet.

Speak; I am bound to hear.

Ghost.

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

What?

Hamlet.

Ghost.

I am thy father's spirit;

Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres ;
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood.— List, list, O, list!-
If thou didst ever thy dear father love,—

Murder most foul, as in the best it is;

But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

Hamlet.

Haste me to know 't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,

May sweep to my revenge.

I find thee apt;

Now, Hamlet, hear:

Ghost.

'T is given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark