MALCOLM. ’Tis call’d the evil: A most miraculous work in this good king; Which often, since my here-remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows, but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy; And sundry blessings hang about his throne, That speak him full of grace. 

Enter Ross.

Ross

 MACDUFF. See, who comes here? 

 MALCOLM. My countryman; but yet I know him not. 

 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 rent 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. 

 MACDUFF. How does my wife? 

 ROSS. Why, well. 

 MACDUFF. And all my children? 

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