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Updated: May 21, 2025
He would have gladly hailed the approach of Birnam wood, so it could have settled down between him and the reverend Jonas; but as no place of refuge was at hand, he bethought himself of the shield of patience, drew his cloak as closely as if he were about to encounter a fierce north wind, and finally returned with much courtesy the salutation of the preacher, whose apt and ready eloquence had obtained for him the significant appellation of Fleetword.
It seems not improbable that Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane. It was for an age of faith, for a people whose credulity was fed on such prodigies and whose imagination glowed at such wonderful portents, that Shakespeare wrote, weaving into the realities of sense those awful mysteries of the supernatural which hovered not far away from every Englishman of his time.
Ruskin did we should all have done, and that not all the trees in Birnam Wood and the Forest of Arden combined would have hidden the multitude of brother-clubmen who sought to avoid the narrator. The faculty of boring belongs, unhappily, to no one period of life. Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety. Middle life is its heyday.
We think of Birnam wood removing to Dunsinane, but that was trivial compared with this. The dark belt of shadow makes a strong and beautiful contrast to the reddish brown and gray of the winter woods. The river is more than bank full. Shut in on one side by the high ridge upon which we are standing it has spread over half a mile of bottom on the other side.
This is the speech I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king: To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of.
Besides this, the hollow promises of the witches had filled him with a false confidence, and he remembered the sayings of the spirits, that none of woman born was to hurt him, and that he was never to be vanquished till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane, which he thought could never be. So he shut himself up in his castle, whose impregnable strength was such as defied a siege.
We discovered, on digging into it, that each led to a broad gallery four feet in diameter. This again led down into the centre of the wonderful habitation. "Hilloa!" cried Arthur; "here comes Birnam Wood in miniature." He was at some distance from us. On going up to him we found what looked like a vast number of leaves moving along over the ground.
But the empty wood was moving like a living thing, like the menacing 'Birnam wood' before the eyes of Macbeth. It was full of an army, with each of their handsome big horses tied to a pine in the forest. Farther off across the roots could be seen small grey tents stretched on logs. Most of the exhausted blackened men were lying all over the ground and sleeping among the quiet beasts.
Thirty years and at the end of them America was to be at grips with Germany, sending armies across the Atlantic to fight in Europe. It would have been as impossible for any of us, on that May evening in Lowndes Square, even to imagine such a future, as it was for Macbeth to credit the absurdity that Birnam wood would ever come to Dunsinane! A year later Mr.
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