Page 1647 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms:
The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
Alarum, and chambers go off.

And down goes all before them. Still be kind,
And eke out our performance with your mind. [35]
Exit.

Scene I IT

Alarum. Enter King [Henry], Exeter, Bedford, Gloucester, and Soldiers with
scaling-ladders.

KING HENRY
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.
Or close the wall up with our English dead!

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our cars, [5]
Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with bard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head [10]

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock
O’erhang and jutty his confunded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, [15]
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height! On, on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof! −

Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought, [20]
And sheath’d their swords for lack of argument.
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest

That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you!