“Great lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss, But cheerly seek how to redress their harms. What though the mast be now blown overboard, The cable broke, our holding-anchor lost, And half our sailors swallow’d in the flood? Yet lives our pilot still: Is’t meet that he Should leave the helm and like a fearful lad With tearful eyes add water to the sea And give more strength to that which hath too much; Whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock, Which industry and courage might have saved? Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this! Say, Warwick was our anchor; what of that? And Montague our top-mast; what of him? Our slaughter’d friends the tackles; what of these? Why, is not Oxford here another anchor? And Somerset another goodly mast? The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings? And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I For once allow’d the skilful pilot’s charge? We will not from the helm to sit and weep, But keep our course, though the rough wind say,—no, From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wreck. As good to chide the waves as speak them fair. And what is Edward but a ruthless sea? What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit? And Richard but a rugged fatal rock? All these the enemies to our poor bark. Say, you can swim; alas, ’tis but a while: Tread on the sand; why, there you quickly sink: Bestride the rock; the tide will wash you off, Or else you famish; that’s a threefold death. This speak I, lords, to let you understand, If case some one of you would fly from us, That there’s no hoped-for mercy with the brothers More than with ruthless waves, with sands and rocks. Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided ’Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.” Well did the bold queen merit the outspoken praises of her son,— “Methinks, a woman of this valiant spirit Should, if a coward heard her speak these words, Infuse his breast with magnanimity, And make him, naked, foil a man at arms.” And in a like strain, when Agamemnon would show that the difficulties of the ten years’ siege of Troy were (l. 20),— “But the protractive trials of great Jove To find persistive constancy in men;” the venerable Nestor, in _Troilus and Cressida_ (act i. sc. 3, l. 33, vol. vi. p. 142), enforces the thought by adding,—