Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.

So looks the strand whereon the imperious flood

Hath left a witnessed usurpation.

Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?

MORTON

I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord,

Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask

To fright our party.

NORTHUMBERLAND How doth my son and brother?

Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek

Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

So dull, so dead in look, so woebegone,

Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him half his Troy was burnt;

But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,

And I my Percy’s death ere thou report‘st it.

This thou wouldst say: ‘Your son did thus and thus,

Your brother thus; so fought the noble Douglas’,

Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds;

But in the end, to stop my ear indeed,

Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,

Ending with ‘Brother, son, and all are dead.’

MORTON

Douglas is living, and your brother yet;

But for my lord your son—

NORTHUMBERLAND Why, he is dead.

See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

He that but fears the thing he would not know

Hath by instinct knowledge from others’ eyes

That what he feared is chanced. Yet speak, Morton.

Tell thou an earl his divination lies,

And I will take it as a sweet disgrace,

And make thee rich for doing me such wrong.

MORTON

You are too great to be by me gainsaid,

Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

NORTHUMBERLAND

Yet for all this, say not that Percy’s dead.

I see a strange confession in thine eye—

Thou shak‘st thy head, and hold’st it fear or sin

To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so.

The tongue offends not that reports his death;

And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,

Not he which says the dead is not alive.

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news

Hath but a losing office, and his tongue

Sounds ever after as a sullen bell

Remembered knolling a departing friend.

LORD BARDOLPH

I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.

MORTON (to Northumberland)

I am sorry I should force you to believe

That which I would to God I had not seen;

But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,

Rend‘ring faint quittance, wearied and out-breathed,

To Harry Monmouth, whose swift wrath beat down

The never-daunted Percy to the earth,

From whence with life he never more sprung up.

In few, his death, whose spirit lent a fire

Even to the dullest peasant in his camp,

Being bruited once, took fire and heat away

From the best-tempered courage in his troops;

For from his metal was his party steeled,

Which once in him abated, all the rest

Turned on themselves, like dull and heavy lead;

And, as the thing that’s heavy in itself

Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed,

So did our men, heavy in Hotspur’s loss,

Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear

That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim

Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,

Fly from the field. Then was that noble Worcester

Too soon ta’en prisoner; and that furious Scot

The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword

Had three times slain th’appearance of the King,

Gan vail his stomach, and did grace the shame

Of those that turned their backs, and in his flight,

Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all

Is that the King hath won, and hath sent out

A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,

Under the conduct of young Lancaster

And Westmorland. This is the news at full.

NORTHUMBERLAND

For this I shall have time enough to mourn.

In poison there is physic; and these news,

Having been well, that would have made me sick,

Being sick, have in some measure made me well;

And, as the wretch whose fever-weakened joints,

Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,

Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire

Out of his keeper’s arms, even so my limbs,

Weakened with grief, being now enraged with grief,

Are thrice themselves.

⌈He casts away his crutch⌉

Hence therefore, thou nice crutch!

A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel

Must glove this hand.

⌈He snatches off his coif⌉

And hence, thou sickly coif!

Thou art a guard too wanton for the head

Which princes fleshed with conquest aim to hit.

Now bind my brows with iron, and approach

The ragged‘st hour that time and spite dare bring

To frown upon th’enraged Northumberland!

Let heaven kiss earth ! Now let not nature’s hand

Keep the wild flood confined! Let order die!

And let this world no longer be a stage

To feed contention in a ling’ring act;