“WILL YOU YIELD AND THIS AVOID, OR GUILTY IN DEFENSE BE THUS DESTROY'D?”

“How yet resolves the governor of the town?This is the latest parle we will admit;Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;Or like to men proud of destructionDefy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,If I begin the battery once again,I will not leave the half-achieved HarfleurTill in her ashes she lie buried.The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,In liberty of bloody hand shall rangeWith conscience wide as hell, mowing like grassYour fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.What is it then to me, if impious war,Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell featsEnlink'd to waste and desolation?What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,If your pure maidens fall into the handOf hot and forcing violation?What rein can hold licentious wickednessWhen down the hill he holds his fierce career?We may as bootless spend our vain commandUpon the enraged soldiers in their spoilAs send precepts to the leviathanTo come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,Take pity of your town and of your people,Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of graceO'erblows the filthy and contagious cloudsOf heady murder, spoil and villany.If not, why, in a moment look to seeThe blind and bloody soldier with foul handDefile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;Your fathers taken by the silver beards,And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confusedDo break the clouds, as did the wives of JewryAt Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd? ”

“Virtue? A fig! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.”

“My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale,And every tale condemns me for a villain.Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree;Murder, stern murder in the dir'st degree,Throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty!, guilty!”

“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer.”

“Thus I die. Thus, thus, thus.Now I am dead,Now I am fled,My soul is in the sky.Tongue, lose thy light.Moon take thy flight.Now die, die, die, die.”

“Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.”