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Crouch for employment. Pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraiséd spirits that have dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon, since a crookéd figure may
Attest in little place a million;

And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high uprearéd and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them

Printing their proud hoofs ' the receiving earth :

Scene 1.]

KING HENRY V.

43

For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our

kings;

Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,

Turning the accomplishment of many years

Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,

Admit me Chorus to this history;

Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. [Exit.

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Cant. My lord, I'll tell you,-that self bill is
urged

Which in the eleventh year of the last king's reign
Was like, and had indeed against us passed,

But that the scambling and unquiet time

Did push it out of farther question

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Ely. But what prevention?

Cant. The king is full of grace and fair regard. Ely. And a true lover of the holy church Cant. The courses of his youth promised it not. The breath no sooner left his father's body, But that his wildness, mortified in him, Seemed to die too; yea, at that very moment, Consideration, like an angel, came

And whipped the offending Adam out of him.

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Leaving his body as a paradise,

To envelope and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood,

With such a heady current, scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.

Ely.

We are blessed in the change.
Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity,

And all-admiring with an inward wish

You would desire the king were made a prelate :
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say it hath been all-in-all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter :-that, when he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences:
So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric;
Which is a wonder how his grace should

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