But, like a lackey, from the rise to set Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn, Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse, And follows so the ever-running year With profitable labour to his grave: And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king. The slave, a member of the country's peace, Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages.
King Henry's Prayer before Agincourt.
O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts; Possess them not with fear; take from them now The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord! O! not to-day, think not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown. I Richard's body have interred anew, And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears Than from it issu'd forced drops of blood. Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold up Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do ; Though all that I can do is nothing worth, Since that my penitence comes after all, Imploring pardon.
ACT IV. Scene III.
King Henry's Address before the Battle.
What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin : If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires : But if it be a sin to covet honour.
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England: God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more, methinks, would share from me, For the best hope I have. O do not wish one more : Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made, And crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man's company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is call'd the feast of Crispian : He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian : Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day." Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile This day shall gentle his condition :
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day
ACT IV. Scene I.
Prospero to Ferdinand.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air :
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
ACT V. Scene I.
Prospero abjures Magic.
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves; And ye, that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms; that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,— Weak masters though ye be—I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war: to the dread-rattling thunder Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt the strong-bas'd promontory Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar: graves at my command Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let them forth By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure; and, when I have required
Some heavenly music,-which even now I do,— To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And, deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book.
ACT III. Scene III.
Ulysses' Appeal to Achilles.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes :
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery.
Keep, then, the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue: if you give way, Like to an enter'd tide they all rush by And leave you hindmost;
Then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours; For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer :
O! let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, That all with one consent praise new-born gawds. Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
The cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet it may again, If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent;
Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late, Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves, And drave great Mars to faction.
The King reproaches Hubert
Bolingbroke and Mowbray before the King Richard visits the dying Gaunt.
Henry the Fourth-Part I.
I. SCENE 3. Hotspur incurs the King's Anger
Falstaff boasts his Prowess
Henry the Fourth-Part II.
The King is Reconciled to his Son Henry the Fifth.
Fluellen chastises Pistol
The King Woos the French Princess Richard the Third.
Gloucester and the Lady Anne
Clarence's Dream
The King and Buckingham
Henry the Eighth.
Buckingham's Farewell
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