Page 1654 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

If your pure maidens fall into the hand [20]
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?

We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon th’ enragèd soldiers in their spoil [25]
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,

Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace [30]
O’er blows the fifthy and contagious clouds

Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; [35]

Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash’d to the walls;
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus’d

Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry [40]
At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid?
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy’d?

Enter Governor [on the wall].

GOVERNOR
Our expectation hath this day an end.
The Dauphin, whom of succours we entreated, [45]
Returns us that his powers are yet not ready
To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great King,

We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy.
Enter our gates; dispose of us and ours;
For we no longer are defensible. [50]

KING HENRY
Open your gates! − Come, uncle Exeter,