In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits
Than now the English bottoms have waft o'er
Did never float upon the swelling tide.
And here is his sermon on national unity, preached by the Bishop of
Carlisle:
O, if you rear this house against this house,
It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth.
Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,
Lest child, child's children, cry against you 'Woe!'
The patriotism of the women is described by the Bastard in _King John_:
Your own ladies and pale-visag'd maids
Like Amazons come tripping after drums:
Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,
Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts
To fierce and bloody inclination.
Lastly, Queen Isabella's blessing, spoken over King Henry V and his
French bride, predicts an enduring friendship between England and
France:
As man and wife, being two, are one in love,
So be there 'twixt your kingdoms such a spousal,
That never may ill office, or fell jealousy,
Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage,
Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms,
To make divorce of their incorporate league;
That English may as French, French Englishmen,
Receive each other! God speak this Amen!
One of the delights of a literature as rich and as old as ours is that
at every step we take backwards we find ourselves again.
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