Enter soldiers, with the body of young Talbot.
TALBOT.
Thou antic Death, which laugh’st us here to scorn,
Anon, from thy insulting tyranny,
Coupled in bonds of perpetuity,
Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky,
In thy despite shall scape mortality.
O thou whose wounds become hard-favour’d Death,
Speak to thy father ere thou yield thy breath!
Brave Death by speaking, whether he will or no;
Imagine him a Frenchman and thy foe.
Poor boy, he smiles, methinks, as who should say,
Had Death been French, then Death had died today.
Come, come, and lay him in his father’s arms;
My spirit can no longer bear these harms.
Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have,
Now my old arms are young John Talbot’s grave.
[Dies.]
Enter Charles, Alençon, Burgundy, Bastard, La Pucelle and forces.
CHARLES.
Had York and Somerset brought rescue in,
We should have found a bloody day of this.
BASTARD.
How the young whelp of Talbot’s, raging-wood,
Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen’s blood!
PUCELLE.
Once I encounter’d him, and thus I said:
“Thou maiden youth, be vanquish’d by a maid.”
But with a proud majestical high scorn
He answer’d thus: “Young Talbot was not born
To be the pillage of a giglot wench.”
So, rushing in the bowels of the French,
He left me proudly, as unworthy fight.
BURGUNDY.
Doubtless he would have made a noble knight.
See, where he lies inhearsed in the arms
Of the most bloody nurser of his harms.
BASTARD.
Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder,
Whose life was England’s glory, Gallia’s wonder.
CHARLES.
O, no, forbear! For that which we have fled
During the life, let us not wrong it dead.