To try with it, as with an enemy
That had before my face murdered my father,
The quarrel of a true inheritor.”
The dying king gladly accepts his son’s explanation, and blessing him passes away; while the new king, in an agony of grief, swears to throw off the waywardness and wildness of his ways. And so, amidst the loud acclaim of his subjects, the crown is placed for the second time on his head, and he begins to reign. Never king will be better loved; he will give his people their fill of martial glory, and loudly they will boast:——
“Oh, when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry!”
And now two years have flown, and you see him again following the will o’ the wisp of that French dominion which the third Edward vainly sought. It is easy to pick a quarrel with France; her king has lost his wits, and his selfish kinsmen are tearing the realm in twain with their enmities and quarrels. So with the might of England at his back Harry crosses the Channel, and his great guns begin to thunder before the walls of Harfleur. Before the town falls his army is fearfully wasted by hunger and disease; nevertheless, he does not mean to return without doing a deed that “will dazzle all the eyes of France.” From Harfleur he writes to the Dauphin and offers to fight him man to man for the kingdom, pleading that the quarrel may thus be settled without the shedding of innocent blood. But the sluggish, mean-spirited Dauphin makes no answer, so Harry cries:——
“The game’s afoot;