Page 1691 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

To give each naked curtle-axe a stain,
That our French gallants shall to-day draw out, [20]
And sheathe for lack of sport: let us but blow on them,
The vapour of our valour will o’erturn them.

’Tis positive ’gainst all exceptions, lords,
That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants,
Who in unnecessary action swarm [25]
About our squares of battle, were enow

To purge this field of such a hilding foe,
Though we upon this mountain’s basis by
Took stand for idle speculation:
But that our honours must not. What’s to say? [30]

A very little little let us do,
And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound
The tucket sonance and the note to mount:
For our approach shall so much dare the field

That England shall couch down in fear, and yield. [35]

Enter Grandpré.

GRANDPRÉ
Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?
Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,
Ill-favour’dly become the morning field:

Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,
And our air shakes them passing scornfully; [40]
Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar’d host,
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps:

The horsemen sit like fixèd candlesticks,
With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades
Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips, [45]
The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes,

And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal’d bit
Lies foul with chaw’d grass, still and motionless;
And their executors, the knavish crows,
Fly o’er them all, impatient for their hour. [50]

Description cannot suit itself in words
To demonstrate the life of such a battle