"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 battery once again, I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur, Till in her ashes she lie buried. The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, And the flesh'd 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 flowering infants. What is it then to me, if impious War, Array'd in flames, like to the prince of fiends, Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats Enlink'd 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 the enraged 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 deadly murder, spoil, and villainy. If not, why, in a moment, look to see The blind and bloody soldier, with foul hand, Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters; Your fathers taken by the silver beards, And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls; Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus'd 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 defence, be thus destroy'd?"