ONE.
Yet rather fight, then, like unnatural sons,
Forsake your loving parents in distress.
TWO.
Tush, they that have already taken arms
Are many fearful millions in respect
Of that small handful of our enemies;
But tis a rightful quarrel must prevail;
Edward is son unto our late king’s sister,
When John Valois is three degrees removed.
WOMAN.
Besides, there goes a Prophesy abroad,
Published by one that was a Friar once,
Whose Oracles have many times proved true;
And now he says, the time will shortly come,
When as a Lyon, roused in the west,
Shall carry hence the fluerdeluce of France:
These, I can tell ye, and such like surmises
Strike many French men cold unto the heart.
[Enter a French man.]
FOUR.
Fly, country men and citizens of France!
Sweet flowering peace, the root of happy life,
Is quite abandoned and expulst the land;
In stead of whom ransacked constraining war
Sits like to Ravens upon your houses’ tops;
Slaughter and mischief walk within your streets,
And, unrestrained, make havoc as they pass;
The form whereof even now my self beheld
Upon this fair mountain whence I came.
For so far of as I directed mine eyes,
I might perceive five Cities all on fire,
Corn fields and vineyards, burning like an oven;
And, as the reaking vapour in the wind
Turned but aside, I like wise might discern
The poor inhabitants, escaped the flame,
Fall numberless upon the soldiers’ pikes.
Three ways these dreadful ministers of wrath
Do tread the measures of their tragic march:
Upon the right hand comes the conquering King,
Upon the left his hot unbridled son,
And in the midst our nation’s glittering host,
All which, though distant yet, conspire in one,
To leave a desolation where they come.
Fly therefore, Citizens, if you be wise,
Seek out some habitation further off:
Here is you stay, your wives will be abused,
Your treasure shared before your weeping eyes;
Shelter you your selves, for now the storm doth rise.
Away, away; me thinks I hear their drums:—
Ah, wretched France, I greatly fear thy fall;
Thy glory shaketh like a tottering wall.
[Exeunt.]
ACT III. SCENE III. The same. Drums.
[Enter King Edward, and the Earl of Darby, With
Soldiers, and Gobin de Grey.]
KING EDWARD.
Where’s the French man by whose cunning guide
We found the shallow of this River Somme,
And had directions how to pass the sea?
GOBIN.
Here, my good Lord.