Page:Henry IV Part 1 (1917) Yale.djvu/30

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Hath lately married. Shall our coffers then

Be emptied to redeem a traitor home?

Shall we buy treason, and indent with fears,

When they have lost and forfeited themselves?

No, on the barren mountains let him starve;

For I shall never hold that man my friend

Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost

To ransom home revolted Mortimer.

Hot. Revolted Mortimer!

He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,

But by the chance of war: to prove that true

Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,

Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took,

When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank,

In single opposition, hand to hand,

He did confound the best part of an hour

In changing hardiment with great Glendower.

Three times they breath'd and three times did they drink,

Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood,

Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,

Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,

And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank

Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.

Never did base and rotten policy

Colour her working with such deadly wounds;

Nor never could the noble Mortimer

Receive so many, and all willingly:

Then let him not be slander'd with revolt.

King. Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him:

He never did encounter with Glendower:

 87 indent: bargain

94 fall off: desert

100 confound: consume

101 changing hardiment: exchanging valour

106 crisp: curled, i.e., rippled

109 Colour: disguise 