A Plain near Tamworth. | |
| |
Enter with drum and colours, RICHMOND, OXFORD, SIR JAMES BLUNT, SIR WALTER HERBERT, and Others, with Ferces, marching. | |
| Richm. Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends, | |
| Bruis’d underneath the yoke of tyranny, | 4 |
| Thus far into the bowels of the land | |
| Have we march’d on without impediment: | |
| And here receive we from our father Stanley | |
| Lines of fair comfort and encouragement. | 8 |
| The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar, | |
| That spoil’d your summer fields and fruitful vines, | |
| Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough | |
| In your embowell’d bosoms, this foul swine | 12 |
| Is now even in the centre of this isle, | |
| Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn: | |
| From Tamworth thither is but one day’s march. | |
| In God’s name, cheerly on, courageous friends, | 16 |
| To reap the harvest of perpetual peace | |
| By this one bloody trial of sharp war. | |
| Oxf. Every man’s conscience is a thousand men, | |
| To fight against this guilty homicide. | 20 |
| Herb. I doubt not but his friends will turn to us. | |
| Blunt. He hath no friends but what are friends for fear, | |
| Which in his dearest need will fly from him. | |
| Richm. All for our vantage: then, in God’s name, march: | 24 |
| True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings; | |
| Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. [Exeunt. | |
