Macduff
My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.
Malcolm
I know him now. Good God, betimes remove
The means that makes us strangers!
Ross
Sir, amen.
Macduff
Stands Scotland where it did?
Ross
Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy: the dead man’s knell
Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.
Macduff
O, relation
Too nice, and yet too true!
Malcolm
What’s the newest grief?
Ross
That of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker:
Each minute teems a new one.