And with your puissant arm renew their feats:
You are their heir, you sit upon their throne;
The blood and courage, that renowned them,
Runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege
Is in the very May-morn of his youth,

Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprizes.

Exe. Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth Do all expect that you should rouse yourself,

As did the former lions of your blood.

West. They know, your grace hath cause, and means, and might;

So hath your highness; never king of England
Had nobles richer, and more loyal subjects;
Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England,
And lie pavilion'd in the fields of France.

Cant. O, let their bodies follow, my dear liege,
With blood, and sword, and fire, to win your right:
In aid whereof, we of the spiritualty

Will raise your highness such a mighty sum,
As never did the clergy at one time

Bring in to any of your ancestors.

K. Hen. We must not only arm to invade the French;

But lay down our proportions to defend

Against the Scot, who will make road upon us

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 essays;
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 wreck and sumless treasuries.

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

If that you will France win,

Then with Scotland first begin:

For once the eagle England being in prey,

To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot

Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs;
Playing the mouse, in absence of the cat,
To spoil and havock more than she can eat.

Exe. It follows then, the cat must stay at home:

Yet that is but a curs'd necessity;

Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries,
And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.
While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,

The advised head d efends itself at home:

For government, though high, and low, and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one concent; Congruing in a full and natural close,

Like music.

Cant. True: therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion; To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience: for so work the honey bees, Creatures, that, by a rule in nature, teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king, and officers of sorts: Where some, like magistrates, correct at home; Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad; Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds; Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor:

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanick porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,-
That many things, having full reference
To one concent, may work contrariously;
As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Fly to one mark;

As

many several ways meet in one town;

VOL. VII.

Q

As
many
fresh streams run in one self sea;
As many lines close in the dial's center;
So many a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege.
Divide your happy England into four;
Whereof take you one quarter into France,
And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.
If we, with thrice that power left at home,
Cannot defend our own door from the dog,
Let us be worried; and our nation lose
The name of hardiness, and policy.

K. Hen. Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.

[Exit an Attendant. The King ascends his Throne.
Now are we well resolved: and,--by God's help;
And yours, the noble sinews of our power,-
France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe,
Or break it all to pieces: Or there we'll sit,
Ruling, in large and ample empery,

O'er France, and all her almost kingly dukedoms;
Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,
Tombless, with no remembrance over them :
Either our history shall, with full mouth,

Speak freely of our acts; or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worship'd with a waxen epitaph.

Enter Ambassadors of France.

Now are we well prepar'd to know the pleasure
Of our fair cousin Dauphin; for, we hear,
Your greeting is from him, not from the king.

Amb. May it please your majesty, to give us leave Freely to render what we have in charge;

Or shall we sparingly show you far off

The Dauphin's meaning, and our embassy?

K. Hen. We are no tyrant, but a Christian king;
Unto whose grace our passion is as subject,

As are our wretches fetter'd in our prisons :
Therefore, with frank and with uncurbed plainness,
Tell us the Dauphin's mind.

Amb. Thus then, in few.

Your highness, lately sending into France,
Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right
Of your great predecessor, king Edward the third.
In answer of which claim, the prince our master
Says, that you savour too much of your youth;
And bids you be advis'd, there's nought in France,
That can be with a nimble galliard won;
You cannot revel into dukedoms there:
He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,
This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this,
Desires you, let the dukedoms, that you claim,
Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
K. Hen. What treasure, uncle?

Exe. Tennis-balls, my liege.

K. Hen. We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant

with us;

His present, and your pains, we thank you for :

When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,

We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set,

Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard:

Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler, That all the courts of France will be disturbed