smirched

How yet resolves the Governor of the town ?
This is the latest parle we will admit .
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves
Or , like to men proud of destruction ,
Defy us to our worst . For , as I am a soldier ,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best ,
If I begin the batt’ry once again ,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie burièd .
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up ,
And the fleshed soldier , rough and hard of heart ,
In liberty of bloody hand , shall range
With conscience wide as hell , mowing like grass
Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants .
What is it then to me if impious war ,
Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends ,
Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats
Enlinked to waste and desolation ?
What is ’t to me , when you yourselves are cause ,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation ?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career ?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon th’ enragèd soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the Leviathan
To come ashore . Therefore , you men of Harfleur ,
Take pity of your town and of your people
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command ,
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder , spoil , and villainy .
If not , why , in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Desire the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters ,
Your fathers taken by the silver beards
And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls ,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds , as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen .
What say you ? Will you yield and this avoid
Or , guilty in defense , be thus destroyed ?

Seest thou not , I say , what a deformed thief
this fashion is , how giddily he turns about all the
hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty ,
sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh’s soldiers
in the reechy painting , sometimes like god Bel’s
priests in the old church window , sometimes like
the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten
tapestry , where his codpiece seems as massy as his
club ?