“We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;His present and your pains we thank you for:When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,We will, in France, by God's grace, play a setShall strike his father's crown into the hazard. King Henry, scene ii”
“I hope they will not come upon us now.King Henry: We are in God's hand, brother, not in theirs.”
“The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.”
“Of France and England, did this king succeed;Whose state so many had the managing.That they lost France and made his England bleed.”
“No matter where; of comfort no man speak:Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;Make dust our paper and with rainy eyesWrite sorrow on the bosom of the earth,Let's choose executors and talk of wills:And yet not so, for what can we bequeathSave our deposed bodies to the ground?Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,And nothing can we call our own but deathAnd that small model of the barren earthWhich serves as paste and cover to our bones.For God's sake, let us sit upon the groundAnd tell sad stories of the death of kings;How some have been deposed; some slain in war,Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;All murder'd: for within the hollow crownThat rounds the mortal temples of a kingKeeps Death his court and there the antic sits,Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,Allowing him a breath, a little scene,To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,Infusing him with self and vain conceit,As if this flesh which walls about our life,Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thusComes at the last and with a little pinBores through his castle wall, and farewell king!Cover your heads and mock not flesh and bloodWith solemn reverence: throw away respect,Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,For you have but mistook me all this while:I live with bread like you, feel want,Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,How can you say to me, I am a king?”
“O momentary grace of mortal men,Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!Who builds his hopes in air of your good looks,Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,Ready, with every nod, to tumble downInto the fatal bowels of the deep.”
“Well, lords, we have not got that which we have:'Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,Being opposites of such repairing nature.York:I know our safety is to follow them;For, as I hear, the king is fled to London,To call a present court of parliament.Let us pursue him ere the writs go forth.What says Lord Warwick? shall we after them?Warwick:After them! nay, before them, if we can.Now, by my faith, lords, 'twas a glorious day:Saint Alban's battle won by famous YorkShall be eternized in all age to come.Sound drums and trumpets, and to London all:And more such days as these to us befall!”