Though they to one be ten,
Yet have we well begun ;
Battles so bravely won
Have ever to the sun
By fame been raisèd.
"And for myself," quoth he, "This my full rest shall be; England ne'er mourn for me Nor more esteem me :
Victor I will remain,
Or on this earth lie slain;
Never shall she sustain
Loss, to redeem me.
"Poitiers and Cressy tell,
When most their pride did swell,
Under our swords they fell:
No less our skill is
Than when our Grandsire great,1
Claiming the regal seat,
By many a warlike feat
Lopped the French lilies."
The Duke of York, so dread,
The eager van-ward led;
With the main Henry sped
Amongst his henchmen;
Excester had the rear,
A braver man not there;
O Lord, 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!
Which did the signal aim
To our hid forces;
When, from a meadow by,
Like a storm, suddenly,
The English archery
Struck the French horses
With spanish yew1 so strong,
Arrows a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents stung,
Piercing the weather:
None from his fellow starts,
But, playing manly parts,
And like to English hearts,
Stuck close together.
When down their bows they threw,
And forth their bilboes drew,
And on the French they flew,
Not one was tardy :
Arms were from shoulders sent,
Scalps to the teeth were rent,
Down the French peasants went :
Our men were hardy.
This while our noble King,
His broad sword brandishing,
Down the French host did ding
As to o'erwhelm it;
And many a deep wound lent,
His arms with blood besprent,
And many a cruel dent
Bruised his helmet.
Glo'ster, that duke so good,
Next of the royal blood,
For famous England stood
With his brave brother;
Clarence, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden knight,
Yet, in that furious fight,
Scarce such another.
Warwick in blood did wade,
Oxford the foe invade,
And cruel slaughter made
Still, as they ran up ;
Suffolk his axe did ply;
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bare them right doughtily,
Ferrers, and Fanhope
Upon Saint Crispin's day1
Fought was this noble fray;
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry :
O, when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?
MARLOWE ranks among the most eminent of our Eliza bethan dramatists. He was the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury; but he obtained, probably through the patronage of a discerning friend, a good school education, and afterwards studied at Cambridge University. When he took his Master of Arts degree in 1587, he was already known as the writer of Tamburlaine the Great. Other plays followed; and for a time Marlowe and Shakespeare were rivals. This splendid rivalry and all it might have led to was, however, cut short in 1593, when poor Marlowe, still not thirty years of age, received a stab in a brawl in some inn at Deptford, and died from its effects. The Hero and Leander, one of the most luscious pieces of narrative verse in the language, was at the time lying unfinished; and Chapman completed it. That fragment, and the pastoral song contained in England's Helicon, to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a Reply, are all that we possess of Marlowe's non-dramatic verse.
On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoined by Neptune's might;
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
At Sestos Hero dwelt: Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her hair,
And offered as a dower his burning throne,
Where she should sit for men to gaze upon.
The outside of her garments were of lawn,
The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn ;
Her wide sleeves green, and bordered with a grove,
Where Venus in her naked glory strove
To please the careless and disdainful eyes
Of proud Adonis, that before her lies;
Her kirtle blue, whereon was many a stain
Made with the blood of wretched lovers slain.
Upon her head she ware a myrtle wreath,
From whence her veil reached to the ground beneath.
Her veil was artificial flowers and leaves,
Whose workmanship both man and beast deceives.
Many would praise the sweet smell as she passed,
When 'twas the odour which her breath forth cast;
And there for honey bees have sought in vain,
And, beat from thence, have lighted there again.
About her neck hung chains of pebble stone,
Which, lightened by her neck, like diamonds shone.
She ware no gloves; for neither sun nor wind
Would burn or parch her hands, but, to her mind,
Or warm or cool them, for they took delight
To play upon those hands, they were so white. . . .
Some say, for her the fairest Cupid pined,
And, looking in her face, was strooken blind.
But this is true; so like was one the other
As he imagined Hero was his mother,
And oftentimes into her bosom flew ;
About her naked neck his bare arms threw,
And laid his childish head upon her breast,
And, with still panting rock, there took his rest.
So lovely fair was Hero, Venus' nun,
As Nature wept, thinking she was undone,
Because she took more from her than she left,
And of such wondrous beauty her bereft :
Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack,
Since Hero's time hath half the world been black.
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