Page:Henry V (1918) Yale.djvu/23

Henry the Fifth, I. ii

With all advantages.

Cant. They of those marches, gracious sovereign,

Shall be a wall sufficient to defend

Our inland from the pilfering borderers.

K. Hen. We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,

But fear the main intendment of the Scot,

Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us;

For you shall read that my great-grandfather

Never went with his forces into France

But that the Scot on his unfurnish'd kingdom

Came pouring, like the tide into a breach,

With ample and brim fulness of his force,

Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,

Girding with grievous siege castles and towns;

That England, being empty of defence,

Hath shook and trembled at the ill neighbourhood.

Cant. She hath been then more fear'd than harm'd, my liege;

For hear her but exampled by herself:

When all her chivalry hath been in France

And she a mourning widow of her nobles,

She hath herself not only well defended,

But taken and impounded as a stray

The King of Scots; whom she did send to France,

To fill King Edward's fame with prisoner kings,

And make your chronicle as rich with praise

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea

With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.

West. But there's a saying very old and true;

 140 marches: borders

143 coursing snatchers: marauding pilferers

144 intendment: intention

145 still: always

giddy: unstable

148 unfurnish'd: undefended

151 assays: attacks

155 fear'd: frightened

160 impounded: imprisoned; cf. n.

165 wrack: wreckage 