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With the main14 Henry sped,
Amongst his henchmen.15
Exeter16 had the rear,

A braver man not there;
Heavens! how hot they were
On the false Frenchmen!

They now to fight are gone:
Armour on armour shone,
Drum now to drum did groan;
To hear was wonder;
That with the cries they make
The very earth did shake;
Trumpet to trumpet spake;
Thunder to thunder.

Well it thine age became,
O noble Erpingham,17
Which did the signal aim
To our hid forces ;18
When from a meadow by,
Like a storm, suddenly,
The English archery

Struck the French horses.

14 main body of the army.
15 henchmen, lit. servants who wait
at the haunch of their master.

16 Exeter, uncle to the king.
17 Sir Thomas Erpingham, a knight,
who fought in the battle. He
was an old man, and gave the
signal for the fight by throwing

his truncheon in the air, calling out, in Norman French, "Now strike," after which he dismounted, as the king and others had done, and fought on foot. 18 The English were partly hidden' behind a village, and in the standing corn.

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O when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry!

With this poem should be read Shakspearo's Henry V., and a History of England.

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Born at Stratford-on-Avon, he left it in early manhood for Londonlived there as a player, play-writer, and part owner of the Theatreand finally returned, well-to-do, to Stratford, and there died. His amazing genius places him far above all other English poets-perhaps above all others of all time.

DEATH.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?-To die-to sleep-
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation?
Devoutly to be wished. To die,-to sleep ;-

1i.e. 'To die is to sleep-nothing more.' 2 consummation, an end, a re

sult. He would fain be able to

say that, death being thus only a sleep, it would end all human troubles.

To sleep perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:-there's the respect3
That makes calamity of so long life:*

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?" who would fardels' bare,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,-
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns,-puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution'

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,10
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard,11 their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.12

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