What does Shakespeare have to say about the dieoff?

Ayoob · Expert Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 1145

Act 3. Scene III
SCENE III. The same. Before the gates.

The Governor and some Citizens on the walls; the English forces below. Enter KING HENRY and his train
KING HENRY V
How yet resolves the governor of the town?
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 villany.
If not, why, 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 confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?

GOVERNOR
Our expectation hath this day an end:
The Dauphin, whom of succors we entreated,
Returns us that his powers are yet not ready
To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great king,
We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy.
Enter our gates; dispose of us and ours;
For we no longer are defensible.

KING HENRY V
Open your gates. Come, uncle Exeter,
Go you and enter Harfleur; there remain,
And fortify it strongly 'gainst the French:
Use mercy to them all. For us, dear uncle,
The winter coming on and sickness growing
Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais.
To-night in Harfleur we will be your guest;
To-morrow for the march are we addrest.

Flourish. The King and his train enter the town

Anthrobus

how about this, what the gratest of poets had to say:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals!
_________________
The mouse, i`ve been sure for years, limps home from the site of the burning ferris wheel with a brand new, airtight plan for killing the cat.

J. D. Salinger

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1476

Don't leave Milton out of the contest. He wrote the ultimate doomer poem: "Melancholia"

Hence, vain deluding Joys
The brood of Folly, without father bread,
How little you bestead
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys,
Dwell in some hollow brain,
And fancies fond with idle shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the fair motes that people the sun beams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.

But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail devoutest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is to bright
To hit the sense of mortals sight
And therefore to our weaker view
Orlaid in black, staid wisdom's hue...

kpeavey · Expert Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 1323

Can't leave out Poe,,,