Sipsey Street Irregulars: Anniversary: Today is St. Crispin's Day.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Anniversary: Today is St. Crispin's Day.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

Wretched Dog reminds me:

TODAY IS SAINT CRISPIN'S DAY

On this day, 25 October 1415, King Henry V of England, and his tiny army of nobles, men-at-arms and English and Welsh longbowmen, left the Flower of French Chivalry laying face down in a muddy field in Northern France near the village of Agincourt.

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words-

Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-

Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

- St. Crispin's Day Speech, Shakespeare's Henry V, 1599

3 comments:

Brock Townsend said...: We Few, We Happy Few, We Band Of Brothers......
...... For He To-Day That Sheds His Blood With Me Shall Be My Brother.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechhenryV.html
(Wonderful, exhilarating voice. BT)

http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=1413&highlight=brothers; October 25, 2009 at 10:40 PM
Anonymous said...: Bravo for posting this rousing speech. Great liturature....great movie, too. King Henry V was the model Christian King, as perfectly balancing Justice & Mercy as any human King could.

Our DID DVD (desert island disks) collection features the 1989 "King Henry V" movie starring Kenneth Branaugh. Rent or buy, it's a great movie - even my 5 year old quote lines from it.

The power of it, in this day of big shot celebrity power mongers, is that this King was a true man of the people, ruling in loving service, and humbled to God's rulership of us all.

I think George Washington, in our nation, came closest in character & nature to this model king.

Anyhow, what a glorious antidote to the Clinton / Bush / Obama arrogance that we've been subjected to for the past two revolting decades !

As CS Lewis noted, 'We become what we behold....'

Beholding, viewing & considering such men of true Christian virtue can provide a 'compass heading' for sincere Patriots to follow, vis a vis the trashy 'standards' Hollywood has proffered of late.

('God's & Generals' chacterization of Jackson & Lee merits similarly...)

Thanks Mike for posting this.

Sam Adams in Texas; October 26, 2009 at 1:46 AM
Uncle Lar said...: I recommend Cornwell's book 'Agincourt' for a soldier's eye view of what it was like in those days long ago. Told from the perspective of an English longbowman.
His Sharpe's company books tell a similar tale of troops in the Napoleonic war era, again from the English viewpoint.; October 26, 2009 at 6:42 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Anniversary: Today is St. Crispin's Day.

3 comments:

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