Page:Henry IV Part 1 (1917) Yale.djvu/62

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you see these meteors? do you behold these

exhalations?

Prince. I do.

Bard. What think you they portend?

Prince. Hot livers and cold purses.

Bard. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.

Prince. No, if rightly taken, halter.—

Here comes lean Jack, here comes bare-bone.—

How now, my sweet creature of bombast! How

long is 't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own

knee?

Fal. My own knee! When I was about thy

years, Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the

waist; I could have crept into any alderman's

thumb-ring. A plague of sighing and grief! it

blows a man up like a bladder. There's villain-

ous news abroad: here was Sir John Bracy from

your father: you must to the court in the morn-

ing. That same mad fellow of the north, Percy,

and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the basti-

nado and made Lucifer cuckold, and swore

the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a

Welsh hook—what a plague call you him?

Poins. O, Glendower.

Fal. Owen, Owen, the same; and his son-in-

law Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and

that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs

o' horseback up a hill perpendicular.

Prince. He that rides at high speed and with

his pistol kills a sparrow flying.

 357 exhalations: meteors

364 bombast: cotton stuffing

375 Amaimon: a devil

bastinado: a cudgelling

378 Welsh hook: weapon resembling a halberd 