And leave your England, as dead midnight, still,
Guarded by grandsires, babies, and old women,
Or past, or not arriv'd to, pith and puissance:
For who is he whose chin is but enrich'd
With one appearing hair, that will not follow
These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege ;
Behold the ordnance on their carriages,

With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
Suppose the ambassa'dor from the French comes back;
Tells Harry-that the king doth offer him
Catherine, his daughter, and with her in dowry
Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.
The offer likes not; and the nimble.gunner
With linstock now the devi'lish cannon touches,
And down goes all before him. Still be kind,
And eke out our performance with your mind.

In obedience, then, to the poet's powerful call, you have before you the besieged walls of Harfleur, and the king leading his men to an attack: he thus speaks :

[K. Henry.] Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once Or close the wall up with our English dead! [more; In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage:
Then lend the eye an aspect terrible;

Let it pry through the head, as the brass cannon
Peers through the battlement; the brow o'ershade it,
As fearfully as doth a fretted rock

O'erhang, and scowl upon, its shrunken base,
Worn by the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide ;
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To its full height! On, on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fetch'd from fathers of war-proof!

Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,

Have, in these parts, from morn till even fought,
And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.

Be

copy now to men of grosser blood, And teach them how to war.

And you, good yeomen,

Whose limbs are bred in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture.

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; onward to the charge,
With-Heaven for Harry, England, and Saint George!

You must allow something more than three weeks for the operations of the siege, and then, without change of place, imagine King Henry surrounded by the other English chiefs, and the governor and citizens on the walls in parley: the king speaks:

[K. 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 wait the worst: for, as I am a soldier,
If I begin the battery once again,

I will not leave your half-achieved town,
Till in her ashes she lie buried:

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up;

And the rough soldier, hard of heart, shall range
With conscience wide as hell; mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins, and your flowering infants.
Take pity of your town and of your people,
While yet my soldiers are in my command.
What say you? Will you yield? or be destroy'd?

The governor answers:

[Governor.] Our expectation hath this day an end:
The dauphin, whom for succour we entreated,
Comes not with powers to raise so great a siege.
Therefore we yield our town unto thy mercy.
Enter our gates, dispose of us and ours;
For we no longer are defensible.

[a pause.]

[K. Henry.] Uncle of Exeter, go you and enter:
The gates are open for you:-keep the town,
And fortify it srongly 'gainst the French.
Use mercy to them all. For us, dear uncle,-
The winter coming on, and sickness growing
Upon our soldiers,--we'll retire to Calais.

To-night in Harfleur will we be your guest;
To-morrow for the march are we address'd.

On the march, then, we follow the king and his sickly and diminished forces. Arrived in Picardy, he has to pass the Somme; but the French possess the fords and defend the bridges. At one of these places, we are to suppose the king addressed by Captain Fluellen, a Welsh gentleman, imagined by the poet to be in his army:

[Fluellen.] Got bless your majesty !

[K. Henry.] How now, Fluellen? bridge?

Com'st thou from the

[Fluellen.] Ay, so please your majesty.

The duke of Exeter hath very gallantly maintained the pridge: the French is gone off, look you; and there is gallant and most prave passages: the duke of Exeter is master of the pridge: I can tell your majesty the duke is a prave

man.

[K. Henry.] What men have you lost, Fluellen?

[Fluellen.] The perdition of th' athversary hath been very great, very reasonable great: marry, for my part, I think the duke hath lost never a man, but one that is to be executed for robbing a church; one Bardolph, if your majesty knows the man: his face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs; and his nose is like a coal of fire, semetimes blue, sometimes red: but his nose is executed, and his fire is out.

[K. Henry.] We would have all offenders cut off; and we give express charge that in our marchings through the country, there be nothing compelled from the villages, and none of the French misused. When lenity and

cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the surest winner.

The French herald, Montjoy, here enters in the attire of the principal king-at-arms, and speaks:

[Montjoy.] You know me by my habit.

[K. Henry.] Well then, I know thee :—what shall I know of thee?

[Montjoy.] My master's mind.

[K. Henry.] Unfold it.

[Mont.] Thus says my king :-Say thou to Harry England, Although we seemed dead, we did but sleep:

Tell him, we could at Harfleur have rebuk'd him,
But that we thought not good to bruise an injury
Till it were ripe. Now speak we on our cue
With voice imperial: England shall repent
His folly, see his weakness, and admire
Our sufferance: tell him therefore to consider
What must the ransom be, that shall proportion
The loss of treasure and the loss of subjects,
The deep disgraces that we have digested.
First, for our loss, too poor is his exchequer ;-
For the effusion of our blood, his army
Too faint a number;—and for our disgrace,
Even his own person, kneeling at our feet,
A weak and worthless satisfaction.

To all this, add defia'nce; and, in conclusion,
Tell him, he hath betray'd his followers,
Whose condemnation in pronounc'd.—So far
My king and master; and so much my office.

[K. Henry.] Thou dost thy office fairly :-Turn thee back
And tell thy king,—I do not seek him now;
But could be willing to march on to Calais
Without impediment; for, to say truth,
Though 'tis no wisdom to confess so much
Unto an enemy of craft and vantage,
My people are with sickness much enfeebled,

My numbers lessen'd, and those few I have,
Almost no better than so many French;

Yet when they were in health, I tell thee, herald,
I thought upon one pair of English legs

Did march three Frenchmen. O forgive me, heaven,
That I do brag thus! this your air of France
Hath blown the vice into me: I repent.-
Go, therefore, tell thy master, here I am;
My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk:
My army, but a weak and sickly guard :
Yet, heaven before! tell him we will come on,
Though France himself, and such another neighbour,
Stand in our way.-There's for thy labour, Montjoy.
Go bid thy master well advise himself:

master;

If we may pass, we will; if we be hinder’d—
-The sum is this,—and this go tell your
We would not seek a battle as we are;
Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it.

[Montjoy.] I shall deliver so. Thanks to your highness.
[K. Henry.] My lords, we are in God's hand, not in theirs :
March to the bridge: it now draws near to night:
Beyond the river we'll encamp ourselves;

And on the morrow, onward if we can.

Pursue, in your thoughts, the king's train, as it passes over the bridge, and imagine the encampment taking place under the shadow of the night. Before proceeding to the next scene, I once more address you as chorus in words which the poet furnishes:

[Chorus.] Now entertain conjecture of a time, When creeping murmur, and the poring dark, Fill the wide vessel of the universe.

From camp to camp,

The hum of either army stilly sounds,

That the fix'd sentinels almost receive

The secret whispers of each other's watch:

Fire answers fire; and, through their paly flames,
Each battle sees the other's umber'd face: