1    My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford arm'd?

2    Yea, at all points; and longs to enter in.

3    The Duke of Norfolk, sprightfully and bold,
4    Stays but the summons of the appellant's trumpet.

5    Why, then, the champions are prepared, and stay
6    For nothing but his majesty's approach.

7    Marshal, demand of yonder champion
8    The cause of his arrival here in arms:
9    Ask him his name and orderly proceed
10   To swear him in the justice of his cause.

11   In God's name and the king's, say who thou art
12   And why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms,
13   Against what man thou comest, and what thy quarrel:
14   Speak truly, on thy knighthood and thy oath;
15   As so defend thee heaven and thy valour!

16   My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk;
17   Who hither come engaged by my oath--
18   Which God defend a knight should violate!--
19   Both to defend my loyalty and truth
20   To God, my king and my succeeding issue,
21   Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me
22   And, by the grace of God and this mine arm,
23   To prove him, in defending of myself,
24   A traitor to my God, my king, and me:
25   And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!

26   Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms,
27   Both who he is and why he cometh hither
28   Thus plated in habiliments of war,
29   And formally, according to our law,
30   Depose him in the justice of his cause.

31   What is thy name? and wherefore comest thou hither,
32   Before King Richard in his royal lists?
33   Against whom comest thou? and what's thy quarrel?
34   Speak like a true knight, so defend thee heaven!

35   Harry of Hereford, Lancaster and Derby
36   Am I; who ready here do stand in arms,
37   To prove, by God's grace and my body's valour,
38   In lists, on Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,
39   That he is a traitor, foul and dangerous,
40   To God of heaven, King Richard and to me;
41   And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!

42   On pain of death, no person be so bold
43   Or daring-hardy as to touch the lists,
44   Except the marshal and such officers
45   Appointed to direct these fair designs.

46   Lord marshal, let me kiss my sovereign's hand,
47   And bow my knee before his majesty:
48   For Mowbray and myself are like two men
49   That vow a long and weary pilgrimage;
50   Then let us take a ceremonious leave
51   And loving farewell of our several friends.

52   The appellant in all duty greets your highness,
53   And craves to kiss your hand and take his leave.

54   We will descend and fold him in our arms.
55   Cousin of Hereford, as thy cause is right,
56   So be thy fortune in this royal fight!
57   Farewell, my blood; which if to-day thou shed,
58   Lament we may, but not revenge thee dead.

59   O let no noble eye profane a tear
60   For me, if I be gored with Mowbray's spear:
61   As confident as is the falcon's flight
62   Against a bird, do I with Mowbray fight.
63   My loving lord, I take my leave of you;
64   Of you, my noble cousin, Lord Aumerle;
65   Not sick, although I have to do with death,
66   But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath.
67   Lo, as at English feasts, so I regreet
68   The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet:
69   O thou, the earthly author of my blood,
70   Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate,
71   Doth with a twofold vigour lift me up
72   To reach at victory above my head,
73   Add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers;
74   And with thy blessings steel my lance's point,
75   That it may enter Mowbray's waxen coat,
76   And furbish new the name of John a Gaunt,
77   Even in the lusty havior of his son.

78   God in thy good cause make thee prosperous!
79   Be swift like lightning in the execution;
80   And let thy blows, doubly redoubled,
81   Fall like amazing thunder on the casque
82   Of thy adverse pernicious enemy:
83   Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live.

84   Mine innocency and Saint George to thrive!

85   However God or fortune cast my lot,
86   There lives or dies, true to King Richard's throne,
87   A loyal, just and upright gentleman:
88   Never did captive with a freer heart
89   Cast off his chains of bondage and embrace
90   His golden uncontroll'd enfranchisement,
91   More than my dancing soul doth celebrate
92   This feast of battle with mine adversary.
93   Most mighty liege, and my companion peers,
94   Take from my mouth the wish of happy years:
95   As gentle and as jocund as to jest
96   Go I to fight: truth hath a quiet breast.

97   Farewell, my lord: securely I espy
98   Virtue with valour couched in thine eye.
99   Order the trial, marshal, and begin.

100  Harry of Hereford, Lancaster and Derby,
101  Receive thy lance; and God defend the right!

102  Strong as a tower in hope, I cry amen.

103  Go bear this lance to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk.

104  Harry of Hereford, Lancaster and Derby,
105  Stands here for God, his sovereign and himself,
106  On pain to be found false and recreant,
107  To prove the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray,
108  A traitor to his God, his king and him;
109  And dares him to set forward to the fight.

110  Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,
111  On pain to be found false and recreant,
112  Both to defend himself and to approve
113  Henry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
114  To God, his sovereign and to him disloyal;
115  Courageously and with a free desire
116  Attending but the signal to begin.

117  Sound, trumpets; and set forward, combatants.
A charge sounded
118  Stay, the king hath thrown his warder down.

119  Let them lay by their helmets and their spears,
120  And both return back to their chairs again:
121  Withdraw with us: and let the trumpets sound
122  While we return these dukes what we decree.
A long flourish
123  Draw near,
124  And list what with our council we have done.
125  For that our kingdom's earth should not be soil'd
126  With that dear blood which it hath fostered;
127  And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect
128  Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbours' sword;
129  And for we think the eagle-winged pride
130  Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,
131  With rival-hating envy, set on you
132  To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle
133  Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep;
134  Which so roused up with boisterous untuned drums,
135  With harsh resounding trumpets' dreadful bray,
136  And grating shock of wrathful iron arms,
137  Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace
138  And make us wade even in our kindred's blood,
139  Therefore, we banish you our territories:
140  You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of life,
141  Till twice five summers have enrich'd our fields
142  Shall not regreet our fair dominions,
143  But tread the stranger paths of banishment.

144  Your will be done: this must my comfort be,
145  Sun that warms you here shall shine on me;
146  And those his golden beams to you here lent
147  Shall point on me and gild my banishment.

148  Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,
149  Which I with some unwillingness pronounce:
150  The sly slow hours shall not determinate
151  The dateless limit of thy dear exile;
152  The hopeless word of 'never to return'
153  Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.

154  A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,
155  And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth:
156  A dearer merit, not so deep a maim
157  As to be cast forth in the common air,
158  Have I deserved at your highness' hands.
159  The language I have learn'd these forty years,
160  My native English, now I must forego:
161  And now my tongue's use is to me no more
162  Than an unstringed viol or a harp,
163  Or like a cunning instrument cased up,
164  Or, being open, put into his hands
165  That knows no touch to tune the harmony:
166  Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue,
167  Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips;
168  And dull unfeeling barren ignorance
169  Is made my gaoler to attend on me.
170  I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
171  Too far in years to be a pupil now:
172  What is thy sentence then but speechless death,
173  Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

174  It boots thee not to be compassionate:
175  After our sentence plaining comes too late.

176  Then thus I turn me from my country's light,
177  To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.

178  Return again, and take an oath with thee.
179  Lay on our royal sword your banish'd hands;
180  Swear by the duty that you owe to God--
181  Our part therein we banish with yourselves--
182  To keep the oath that we administer:
183  You never shall, so help you truth and God!
184  Embrace each other's love in banishment;
185  Nor never look upon each other's face;
186  Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile
187  This louring tempest of your home-bred hate;
188  Nor never by advised purpose meet
189  To plot, contrive, or complot any ill
190  'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.

191  I swear.

192  And I, to keep all this.

193  Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy:--
194  By this time, had the king permitted us,
195  One of our souls had wander'd in the air.
196  Banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh,
197  As now our flesh is banish'd from this land:
198  Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm;
199  Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
200  The clogging burthen of a guilty soul.

201  No, Bolingbroke: if ever I were traitor,
202  My name be blotted from the book of life,
203  And I from heaven banish'd as from hence!
204  But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know;
205  And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.
206  Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray;
207  Save back to England, all the world's my way.

208  Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes
209  I see thy grieved heart: thy sad aspect
210  Hath from the number of his banish'd years
211  Pluck'd four away.
To HENRY BOLINGBROKE
212  Six frozen winter spent,
213  Return with welcome home from banishment.

214  How long a time lies in one little word!
215  Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
216  End in a word: such is the breath of kings.

217  I thank my liege, that in regard of me
218  He shortens four years of my son's exile:
219  But little vantage shall I reap thereby;
220  For, ere the six years that he hath to spend
221  Can change their moons and bring their times about
222  My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light
223  Shall be extinct with age and endless night;
224  My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
225  And blindfold death not let me see my son.

226  Why uncle, thou hast many years to live.

227  But not a minute, king, that thou canst give:
228  Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,
229  And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow;
230  Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,
231  But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;
232  Thy word is current with him for my death,
233  But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

234  Thy son is banish'd upon good advice,
235  Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave:
236  Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lour?

237  Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.
238  You urged me as a judge; but I had rather
239  You would have bid me argue like a father.
240  O, had it been a stranger, not my child,
241  To smooth his fault I should have been more mild:
242  A partial slander sought I to avoid,
243  And in the sentence my own life destroy'd.
244  Alas, I look'd when some of you should say,
245  I was too strict to make mine own away;
246  But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue
247  Against my will to do myself this wrong.

248  Cousin, farewell; and, uncle, bid him so:
249  Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

250  Cousin, farewell: what presence must not know,
251  From where you do remain let paper show.

252  My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride,
253  As far as land will let me, by your side.

254  O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,
255  That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?

256  I have too few to take my leave of you,
257  When the tongue's office should be prodigal
258  To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.

259  Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.

260  Joy absent, grief is present for that time.

261  What is six winters? they are quickly gone.

262  To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.

263  Call it a travel that thou takest for pleasure.

264  My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,
265  Which finds it an inforced pilgrimage.

266  The sullen passage of thy weary steps
267  Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set
268  The precious jewel of thy home return.

269  Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make
270  Will but remember me what a deal of world
271  I wander from the jewels that I love.
272  Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
273  To foreign passages, and in the end,
274  Having my freedom, boast of nothing else
275  But that I was a journeyman to grief?

276  All places that the eye of heaven visits
277  Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
278  Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
279  There is no virtue like necessity.
280  Think not the king did banish thee,
281  But thou the king. Woe doth the heavier sit,
282  Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
283  Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour
284  And not the king exiled thee; or suppose
285  Devouring pestilence hangs in our air
286  And thou art flying to a fresher clime:
287  Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
288  To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou comest:
289  Suppose the singing birds musicians,
290  The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd,
291  The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
292  Than a delightful measure or a dance;
293  For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
294  The man that mocks at it and sets it light.

295  O, who can hold a fire in his hand
296  By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
297  Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
298  By bare imagination of a feast?
299  Or wallow naked in December snow
300  By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
301  O, no! the apprehension of the good
302  Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
303  Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more
304  Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.

305  Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee on thy way:
306  Had I thy youth and cause, I would not stay.

307  Then, England's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;
308  My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!
309  Where'er I wander, boast of this I can,
310  Though banish'd, yet a trueborn Englishman.