Though't be a sportful combat,
Yet in the trial much opinion dwells.
Nothing can seem foul to those that win.
Ready in gibes, quick-answer'd, saucy, and
As quarrelous as a weasel.
He that commends me to mine own content,
Commends me to the thing I cannot get
I to the world am like a drop of water,
That in the ocean seeks another drop;
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.
Where nothing wants, that want itself doth seek.
Your worship's a wanton.
WANTONNESS.
The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him ; if the devil have him not in fee simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again. M. W. iv. 2.
WAR (See also BATTLE).
The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.
Slaves for pillage fighting,
Obdurate vassals, fell exploits effecting,
In bloody deaths and ravishments delighting;
Nor children's tears, nor mothers' groans respecting.
Put armour on thine ears, and on thine eyes;
Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,
Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding,
Shall pierce a jot.
The grappling vigour, and rough frown of war.
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy, and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot,
T. A. iv. 3.
K. J. iii. 1.
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause;
Which is not tomb enough, and continent,
To hide the slain.
Giving our holy virgins to the stain
Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain'd war.
Let it not disgrace me,
If I demand, before this royal view,
What rub, or what impediment, there is,
Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
Should not, in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas! she hath from France too long been chas'd:
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in its own fertility.
Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unpruned, dies: her hedges even-pleach'd,
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disorder'd twigs: her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,
Doth root upon; while that the coulter rusts,
That should deracinate such savagery:
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems,
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility.
And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness;
Even so our houses, and ourselves, and children,
Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country;
But grow, like savages,- -as soldiers will,
That nothing do but meditate on blood,--
To swearing, and stern looks, diffus'd attire,
And every thing that seems unnatural.
Now, for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty,
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest,
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:
Now powers from home, and discontents at home,
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits
(As doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast)
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.
Now happy he, whose cloak and cincture can
Hold out this tempest.
Lean famine, quartering steel, and climbing fire.
Now all the youth of Eugland are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man:
They sell the pasture now to buy the horse;
Following the mirror of all Christian kings,
With winged heels, as English Mercuries. H. V. ii. chorus.
Accursed and unquiet wrangling days!
How many of you have mine eyes beheld!
My husband lost his life to get the crown;
And often up and down my sons were toss'd,
For me to joy, and weep, their gain and loss;
And, being seated, and domestic broils
Clean overblown, themselves, the conquerors
Make war upon themselves; brother to brother,
Blood to blood, self 'gainst self. O preposterous
And frantic outrage! end thy damned spleen;
Or let me die, to look on death no more!
Two thousand souls, and twenty thousand ducats,
Will not debate the question of this straw:
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace;
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without,
Why the man dies.
A pain that only seems to seek out danger
I' the name of fame, and honour; which dies i' the search.
Hence, therefore, thou nice crutch;
A scaly gauntlet now, with joints of steel,
Must glove this hand: And hence, thou sickly quoif;
Thou art a guard too wanton for the head,
Which princes, flesh'd with conquest, aim to hit.
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 flow'ring infants.
This churlish knot of all-abhorred war. H. IV. PT. I. v. 1.
O war, thou son of hell,
Whom angry
heavens do make their minister,
Throw in the frozen bosoms of our parts
Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly:
He that is truly dedicate to war,
Hath no self-love; nor he, that loves himself,
Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,
The name of valour.
In a moment, look to see
The blind and bloody soldier, with foul hand,
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls;
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes;
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus'd
Do break the clouds.
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches.
Behold the ordnance on their carriages,
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules:
Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel;
Then what should war be?
Mortal staring war.
God forgive the sins of all those souls,
That to their everlasting residence,
Before the dew of evening fall, shall fleet,
In dreadful trial of our kingdom's king.
Why have they dar'd to march
So many miles upon her peaceful bosom;
Frighting her pale-fac'd villages with war,
And ostentation of despightful arms?
He is their god; he leads them like a thing,
Made by some other deity than nature,
That shapes man better; and they follow him,
Against us brats, with no less confidence,
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,
Or butchers killing flies.
Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still :
Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill. H. VI. PT. II. v. 2.
Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
Be call'd our mother, but our grave: where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rend the air,
Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstacy; the dead man's knell,
Is there scarce ask'd, for who; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying, or ere they sicken.
Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels ; that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.
Examples, gross as earth, exhort me:
Witness, this army of such mass, and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince;
Whose spirit, by divine ambition puff'd,
Makes mouths at the invisible event;
Exposing what is mortal, and unsure,
To all that fortune, death, and danger, dare,
Even for an egg-shell.
England hath long been mad, and scarr'd herself;
The brother blindly shed the brother's blood,
The father rashly slaughter'd his own son,
The son, compell'd, been butcher to the sire.
The purple testament of bleeding war;
But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,
Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers' sons
Shall ill-become the flower of England's face
Change the complexion of her maid-pale face,
To scarlet indignation, and bedew
Her pastures' grass with faithful English blood.
Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous!
Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition,
And charity chas'd hence by rancour's hand:
Foul subornation is predominant,
And equity exil'd your highness' land. H. VI. PT. II. iii. 1.
Shall we go throw away our coats of steel,
And wrap our bodies in black mourning gowns,
Numb'ring our Ave-Maries with our beads?
Or shall we, on the helmets of our fees,
Tell our devotion with revengeful arms!
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