Edward III quotes

Or, else, thy title in that province dies, And he himself will repossess the place.

See, how occasion laughs me in the face!

No sooner minded to prepare for France, But straight I am invited, nay, with threats, Upon a penalty, enjoin’d to come: ’Twere but a childish part to say him nay.— Lorraine, return this answer to thy lord: I mean to visit him, as he requests;

When she would talk of peace, methinks, her tongue Commanded war to prison; when of war, It waken’d Caesar from his Roman grave, To hear war beautified by her discourse.

Wisdom is foolishness, but in her tongue, Beauty a slander, but in her fair face:

There is no summer, but in her cheerful looks, Nor frosty winter, but in her disdain. I cannot blame the Scots that did besiege her, For she is all the treasure of our land;

What beauty else could triumph over me; Or who but women, do our love-lays greet?

What, think’st thou I did bid thee praise a horse?

Of what condition or estate she is, ’Twere requisite that I should know, my lord.

I did not bid thee talk of chastity, To ransack so the treasure of her mind;

For I had rather have her chas’d, than chaste.

Out with the moon-line, I will none of it, And let me have her liken’d to the sun:

As easy may my intellectual soul Be lent away, and yet my body live, As lend my body, palace to my soul, Away from her, and yet retain my soul.

My body is her bower, her court, her abbey, And she an angel, pure, divine, unspotted;

If I should leave her house, my lord, to thee, I kill my poor soul, and my poor soul me.

and will your sacred self Commit high treason against the King of Heaven, To stamp his image in forbidden metal, Forgetting your allegiance and your oath? In violating marriage’ sacred law, You break a greater honour than yourself:

To be a king, is of a younger house Than to be married;

your progenitor, Sole-reigning Adam on the universe, By God was honour’d for a married man, But not by him anointed for a king. It is a penalty to break your statutes, Though not enacted with your highness’ hand:

Whether is her beauty by her words divine, Or are her words sweet chaplains to her beauty? Like as the wind doth beautify a sail, And as a sail becomes the unseen wind, So do her words her beauty, beauty words.

O, that I were a honey-gathering bee, To bear the comb of virtue from this flower; And not a poison-sucking envious spider, To turn the juice I take to deadly venom!

Religion is austere, and beauty gentle; Too strict a guardian for so fair a ward. O, that she were, as is the air, to me! Why, so she is; for, when I would embrace her, This do I, and catch nothing but myself.

Far be it from the honour of my age That I should owe bright gold and render lead!

Age is a cynic, not a flatterer:

I say again, that, if I knew your grief, And that by me it may be lessened, My proper harm should buy your highness’ good.

The mighty King of England dotes on thee: He that hath power to take away thy life Hath power to take thine honour; then consent To pawn thine honour, rather than thy life:

Honour is often lost and got again; But life, once gone, hath no recovery.

The sun, that withers hay, doth nourish grass; The king that would distain thee will advance thee. The poets write that great Achilles’ spear Could heal the wound it made: the moral is, What mighty men misdo, they can amend.

Still do I see in him delineate His mother’s visage; those his eyes are hers, Who looking wistly on me make me blush; For faults against themselves give evidence:

Lust is a fire; and men, like lanthorns, show Light lust within themselves, even through themselves.

Away, loose silks of wavering vanity! Shall the large limit of fair Brittany By me be overthrown? and shall I not Master this little mansion of myself? Give me an armour of eternal steel; I go to conquer kings;

Or else, by Heaven, kneeling this sharp-pointed knife Shall stain thy earth with that which thou wouldst stain, My poor chaste blood. Swear, Edward, swear, Or I will strike and die before thee here.

Even by that Power I swear, that gives me now The power to be ashamed of myself,

I never mean to part my lips again In any words that tends to such a suit.

Arise, true English Lady, whom our isle May better boast of, than e’er Roman might Of her, whose ransack’d treasury hath task’d The vain endeavour of so many pens:

Arise; and be my fault thy honour’s fame, Which after-ages shall enrich thee with.

I am awaked from this idle dream;— Warwick, my son, Derby, Artois, and Audley, Brave warriors all, where are you all this while?

The prince, my lord, the prince! O, succour him; He’s close encompass’d with a world of odds!

Then will he win a world of honour too If he by valour can redeem him thence:

If not, what remedy? we have more sons Than one, to comfort our declining age.

Poor silly men, much wrong’d and more distress’d!— Go, Derby, go, and see they be reliev’d; Command that victuals be appointed them And give to every one five crowns a-piece:—Exeunt Derby and Frenchmen.

The lion scorns to touch the yielding prey,

And Edward’s sword must flesh itself in such As wilful stubbornness hath made perverse.—

No, good, my lord, except the same be just;

For profit must with honour be comix’d Or else our actions are but scandalous:

But, letting pass these intricate objections, Will’t please your highness to subscribe, or no?

Then thus it stands—the valley for our flight The king binds in; the hills on either hand Are proudly royalized by his sons; And on the hill behind stands certain death, In pay and service with Chatillion.

Death’s name is much more mighty than his deeds;

— Thy parcelling this power hath made it more. As many sands as these my hands can hold Are but my handful of so many sands; Then, all the world—and call it but a power— Easily ta’en up, and quickly thrown away:

when we name a man, His hand, his foot, his head, hath several strengths; And being all but one self instant strength, Why, all this many, Audley, is but one, And we can call it all but one man’s strength.

He, that hath far to go, tells it by miles; If he should tell the steps, it kills his heart:

The drops are infinite that make a flood, And yet, thou know’st, we call it but a rain. There is but one France, one King of France, That France hath no more kings; and that same king Hath but the puissant legion of one king;

He, that hath far to go, tells it by miles; If he should tell the steps, it kills his heart:

The drops are infinite that make a flood, And yet, thou know’st, we call it but a rain.

There is but one France, one King of France, That France hath no more kings; and that same king Hath but the puissant legion of one king; And we have one: then apprehend no odds, For one to one is fair equality.—

Herald of Philip, greet thy lord from me; All good, that he can send, I can receive: But think’st thou not, the unadvised boy Hath wrong’d himself in thus far tend’ring me?

Haply, he cannot pray without the book; I think him no divine extemporal:

Then render back this commonplace of prayer, To do himself good in adversity. Besides, he knows not my sin’s quality And therefore knows no prayers for my avail;

Thyself art bruis’d and bit with many broils, And stratagems forepast with iron pens Are texted in thine honourable face; Thou art a married man in this distress, But danger woos me as a blushing maid: Teach me an answer to this perilous time.

To die is all as common as to live;

The one in choice, the other holds in chase: For from the instant we begin to live We do pursue and hunt the time to die: First bud we, then we blow, and after seed; Then, presently, we fall;

For from the instant we begin to live We do pursue and hunt the time to die: First bud we, then we blow, and after seed; Then, presently, we fall; and, as a shade Follows the body, so we follow death.

If then we hunt for death, why do we fear it?

If we fear it, why do we follow it? If we do fear, how can we shun it? If we do fear, with fear we do but aid The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner:

If we do fear, how can we shun it? If we do fear, with fear we do but aid The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner: If we fear not, then no resolved proffer Can overthrow the limit of our fate:

For, whether ripe or rotten, drop we shall, As we do draw the lottery of our doom.

Ah, good old man, a thousand thousand armours These words of thine have buckled on my back. Ah, what an idiot hast thou made of life, To seek the thing it fears! and how disgrac’d The imperial victory of murd’ring death!

and how disgrac’d The imperial victory of murd’ring death! Since all the lives, his conquering arrows strike, Seek him, and he not them, to shame his glory. I will not give a penny for a life, Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death,

Since for to live is but to seek to die, And dying but beginning of new life.

Let come the hour when he that rules it will! To live, or die, I hold indifferent. Exeunt.

What, am I not a soldier in my word? Then, arms adieu, and let them fight that list:

Shall I not give my girdle from my waste

But with a guardian I shall be controll’d, To say, I may not give my things away?

Fly, father, fly! the French do kill the French; Some that would stand let drive at some that fly: Our drums strike nothing but discouragement, Our trumpets sound dishonour and retire; The spirit of fear, that feareth nought but death, Cowardly works confusion on itself.

Pluck out your eyes and see not this day’s shame! An arm hath beat an army; one poor David Hath with a stone foil’d twenty stout Goliahs:

Some twenty naked starvelings with small flints Hath driven back a puissant host of men, Array’d and fenc’d in all accomplements.

Fie, lords! is’t not a shame that English boys, Whose early days are yet not worth a beard, Should in the bosom of your kingdom thus, One against twenty, beat you up together?

Thy fortune, not thy force, hath conquer’d us.

An argument that Heaven aides the right.—

Ah, be more mild unto these yielding men!

It is a glorious thing, to stablish peace; And kings approach the nearest unto God, By giving life and safety unto men.

As thou intendest to be King of France, So let her people live to call thee king; For what the sword cuts down or fire hath spoil’d Is held in reputation none of ours.

But, Copland, thou didst scorn the king’s command, Neglecting our commission in his name.

His name I reverence, but his person more;

His name shall keep me in allegiance still, But to his person I will bend my knee.