Page 268 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.

Enter [Soldiers] with [the body of] John Talbot borne.

SERVANT

O my dear lord, lo where your son is borne!

T ALBOT

Thou antic Death, which laugh’st us here to scorn,
Anon from thy insulting tyranny,
Coupled in bonds of perpetuity, [20]
Two Talbots, wingèd through the lither sky,
In thy despite shall ’scape mortality -
O thou whose wounds become hard-favoured Death,
Speak to thy father ere thou yield thy breath!
Brave Death by speaking, whether he will or no; [25]
Imagine him a Frenchman and thy foe -
Poor boy, he smiles, methinks, as who should say,
‘Had Death been French, then Death had died today.’
Come, come, and lay him in his father’s arms;
My spirit can no longer bear these harms. [30]
Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have,
Now my old arms are young John Talbot’s grave.

Dies.
[Alarums. Exeunt soldiers, leaving the bodies.]

Enter Charles, Alençon, Burgundy, Bastard, and [la] Pucelle [with
Forces].

CHARLES

Had York and Somerset brought rescue in,
We should have found a bloody day of this.

BAST ARD

How the young whelp of Talbot’s, raging-wood, [35]
Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen’s blood.

PUCELLE

Once I encountered him, and thus I said:
‘Thou maiden youth, be vanquished by a maid’;
But with a proud majestical high scorn