Were it to gore with pike my father’s breast;
Were it to rive and cleave my brother’s head;
Were it to tear peacemeal my dearest child,
I would enforce my grudging hands to help.
I cannot term that place my native soil,
Whereto your trumpets send their warlike sounds.
If case requir’d to batter down the tow’rs
Of any town that Arthur would destroy,
Yea, were ’t of Britain’s self, which most I reed,
Her bulwarks, fortress, rampiers, walls and fence,