For that he seeks his son's. Doubtless his new
ethereal form has its capacities and privileges. It can shift its garb
at will; can appear in mail or night-gown, unaided of armourer or
tailor; can pass through Hades-gates or chamber-door with equal ease;
can work in the ground like mole or pioneer, and let its voice be heard
from the cellarage. But there is one to whom it cannot appear, one whom
the ghost can see, but to whom he cannot show himself. She has built a
doorless, windowless wall between them, and sees the husband of her
youth no more. Outside her heart--that is the night in which he wanders,
while the palace-windows are flaring, and the low wind throbs to the
wassail shouts: within, his murderer sits by the wife of his bosom, and
in the orchard the spilt poison is yet gnawing at the roots of the
daisies.
Twice has the ghost grown out of the night upon the eyes of the
sentinels. With solemn march, slow and stately, three times each night,
has he walked by them; they, jellied with fear, have uttered no
challenge. They seek Horatio, who the third night speaks to him as a
scholar can. To the first challenge he makes no answer, but stalks away;
to the second,
It lifted up its head, and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak;
but the gaoler cock calls him, and the kingly shape
started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons;
and then
shrunk in haste away,
And vanished from our sight.
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