Shame and confusion! All is on the rout....

Shame and confusion! All is on the rout.

Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds

Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell,

Whom angry heavens do make their minister,

Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part

Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly.

He that is truly dedicate to war

Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself

Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,

The name of valor.

(He sees his father, lying dead.)

O, let the vile world end

And the premised flames of the last day

Knit Earth and heaven together!

Now let the general trumpet blow his blast,

Particularities and petty sounds

To cease! Wast thou ordained, dear father,

To lose thy youth in peace, and to achieve

The silver livery of advisèd age,

And, in thy reverence and thy chair-days, thus

To die in ruffian battle? Even at this sight

My heart is turned to stone, and while 'tis mine,

It shall be stony. York not our old men spares;

No more will I their babes. Tears virginal

Shall be to me even as the dew to fire;

And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims,

Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.

Henceforth I will not have to do with pity.

Meet I an infant of the house of York,

Into as many gobbets will I cut it

As wild Medea young Absyrtis did.

In cruelty will I seek out my fame.

(He takes his father's body onto his back.)

Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford's house;

As did Aeneas old Anchises bear,

So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders.

But then Aeneas bare a living load,

Nothing so heavy as these woes of mine.

Shakespeare, William, Henry VI Part 2, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2255/pg2255.html, Act 5, Scene 2.

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