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Enter Chorus. | |
| Chor. Thus with imagin’d wing our swift scene flies | |
| In motion of no less celerity | |
| Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen | |
| The well-appointed king at Hampton pier | 5 |
| Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet | |
| With silken streamers the young Phœbus fanning: | |
| Play with your fancies, and in them behold | |
| Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; | |
| Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give | 10 |
| To sounds confus’d; behold the threaden sails, | |
| Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, | |
| Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow’d sea, | |
| Breasting the lofty surge. O! do but think | |
| You stand upon the rivage and behold | 15 |
| A city on the inconstant billows dancing; | |
| For so appears this fleet majestical, | |
| Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! | |
| Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, | |
| And leave your England, as dead midnight still, | 20 |
| Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women, | |
| Either past or not arriv’d to pith and puissance: | |
| For who is he, whose chin is but enrich’d | |
| With one appearing hair, that will not follow | |
| Those cull’d and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? | 25 |
| Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege; | |
| Behold the ordenance on their carriages, | |
| With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur. | |
| Suppose the ambassador from the French comes back; | |
| Tells Harry that the king doth offer him | 30 |
| Katharine his daughter; and with her, to dowry, | |
| Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms: | |
| The offer likes not: and the nimble gunner | |
| With linstock now the devilish cannon touches, [Alarum; and chambers go off. | |
| And down goes all before them. Still be kind, | 35 |
| And eke out our performance with your mind. [Exit. | |
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