Page 1653 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

JAMY

Ah, that’s a foul fault.
A parley sounded.

GOWER
The town sounds a parley. [130]

FLUELLEN
Captain Macmorris, when there is more better opportunity to be required,

look you, I will be so bold as to tell you I know the disciplines of war; and
there is an end.
Exeunt.

Scene III IT

Enter King [Henry] and all his train before the gates.

KING HENRY
How yet resolves the Governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit:
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction

Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier, [5]
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again.
I will not leave the half-achievèd Harfleur

Till in her ashes she lie burièd.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, [10]
And the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range

With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war, [15]
Array’d in flames like to the prince of fiends,

Do, with his smirch’d complexion, all fell feats
Enlink’d to waste and desolation?
What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,