Page:Henry V (1918) Yale.djvu/59

Henry the Fifth, III. iii

This is the latest parle we will admit:

Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;

Or like to men proud of destruction

Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,—

A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,—

If I begin the battery once again,

I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur

Till in her ashes she lie buried.

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,

And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,

In liberty of bloody hand shall range

With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass

Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.

What is it then to me, if impious war,

Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,

Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats

Enlink'd to waste and desolation?

What is 't to me, when you yourselves are cause,

If your pure maidens fall into the hand

Of hot and forcing violation?

What rein can hold licentious wickedness

When down the hill he holds his fierce career?

We may as bootless spend our vain command

Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil

As send precepts to the leviathan

To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,

Take pity of your town and of your people,

Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;

Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace

O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds

Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.

 2 parle: parley

11 flesh'd: hardened by bloodshed

17 fell feats: savage practices

18 Enlink'd to: associated with

24 bootless: uselessly

31 O'erblows: blows away

32 heady: headstrong 