[Verse 1] Dunsinane's walls hung thick with his banners, Macbeth struts the rampart, mocking all manners— "Let them starve at the gate, let the siege turn to laughter, this keep holds firm till the hunger comes after." He's drunk on the promise the witches once gave him, thinks a riddle of magic's enough now to save him, counting his soldiers like coins in a vault, calling his own creeping dread just a fault. [Chorus] "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" — three empty rooms with no joy left to borrow, a king counts his days like a debt he can't pay, hereafter means later, but later's dead weight today. [Verse 2] A cry splits the hall, high and thin, women wailing, Seyton walks in, his own voice sounds failing, he says the queen's gone — no dagger, no battle, just silence that stops every bell, every rattle. Macbeth doesn't flinch, doesn't fall, doesn't shatter, numb as a stone, like the news doesn't matter: "She should have died hereafter" — he means, there would've come time for the tears and the scenes, but time has run thin as a candle wick burning, and grief waits in line while the battle keeps turning. [Chorus] "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" — three empty rooms with no joy left to borrow, a king counts his days like a debt he can't pay, hereafter means later, but later's dead weight today. [Verse 3] "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day" — he counts out the hours like coins he can't borrow, every one of them spent on a crown slipping away. "Out, out, brief candle!" he snuffs it himself now, "Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player" who struts for an hour and then takes his last bow, no second act written, no hero, no prayer. He calls his own life now "a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing" — the gold turns to pale, the throne was the verdict, the verdict's his jury. [Verse 4] A messenger stumbles, pale, short on his breath, says the wood on the hill seems to march toward his death— Birnam is coming, the trees pulling free, and Macbeth finally hears what the witches meant, see: equivocation — sweet words dressed to trick, a promise that's true but the logic's gone sick, the gap in the vow where the danger was hid. He's aweary of sunlight, bone-tired, dead-lid, but straps on his harness — the old word for armor— and charges out roaring, done playing the charmer. [Bridge] He killed for a future, paid blood for tomorrow, and tomorrow arrived with nothing to borrow, no treasure, no son, just a candle that's spent, the sound and the fury — and that's where it went. [Outro] "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" — the wood is alive and the castle's in sorrow, the candle goes out, and the player takes his bow, signifying nothing — he knows that now.
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