Page:Henry V (1918) Yale.djvu/125

Henry the Fifth, V. ii

If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting

into my saddle with my armour on my back,

under the correction of bragging be it spoken,

I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might

buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her

favours, I could lay on like a butcher and sit

like a jack-an-apes, never off. But before God,

Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out my

eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protesta-

tion; only downright oaths, which I never use

till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou

canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose

face is not worth sun-burning, that never looks

in his glass for love of anything he sees there,

let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain

soldier: if thou canst love me for this, take me;

if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but

for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee

too. And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a

fellow of plain and uncoined constancy, for he

perforce must do thee right, because he hath

not the gift to woo in other places; for these

fellows of infinite tongue, that can rime them-

selves into ladies' favours, they do always reason

themselves out again. What! a speaker is but

a prater; a rime is but a ballad. A good leg

will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard

will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a

fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow,

but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the

moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon;

 145 buffet: box

bound my horse: make my horse leap

147 jack-an-apes: monkey

148 greenly: foolishly

149 cunning: skill

152 temper: disposition

155 let cook; cf. n.

160 uncoined constancy: cf. n.

167 fall: shrink 