Now bind my brows with iron

Northumberland
Now bind my brows with iron, and approach
The ragged’st hour that time and spite dare bring
To frown upon th’ enraged Northumberland.
Let heaven kiss Earth! Now let not Nature’s hand
Keep the wild flood confined. Let order die,
And let this world no longer be a stage
To feed contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the firstborn Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead.
Lord Bardolph
This strainèd passion doth you wrong, my lord.

Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honor.
The lives of all your loving complices
Lean on your health

Morton
Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honor.
The lives of all your loving complices
Lean on your health, the which, if you give o’er
To stormy passion, must perforce decay.
You cast th’ event of war, my noble lord,
And summed the accompt of chance before you said
“Let us make head.” It was your presurmise
That in the dole of blows your son might drop.
You knew he walked o’er perils on an edge,
More likely to fall in than to get o’er.
You were advised his flesh was capable
Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit
Would lift him where most trade of danger ranged.
Yet did you say “Go forth,” and none of this,
Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
The stiff-borne action. What hath then befall’n,
Or what did this bold enterprise bring forth,
More than that being which was like to be?
Lord Bardolph
We all that are engagèd to this loss
Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas
That if we wrought out life, ’twas ten to one;
And yet we ventured, for the gain proposed
Choked the respect of likely peril feared;
And since we are o’erset, venture again.
Come, we will all put forth, body and goods.
Morton
’Tis more than time.—And, my most noble lord,
I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth:
The gentle Archbishop of York is up
With well-appointed powers. He is a man
Who with a double surety binds his followers.
My lord your son had only but the corpse,
But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;
For that same word “rebellion” did divide
The action of their bodies from their souls,
And they did fight with queasiness, constrained,
As men drink potions, that their weapons only
Seemed on our side. But, for their spirits and souls,
This word “rebellion,” it had froze them up
As fish are in a pond. But now the Bishop
Turns insurrection to religion.
Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts,
He’s followed both with body and with mind,
And doth enlarge his rising with the blood
Of fair King Richard, scraped from Pomfret stones;
Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;
Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,
Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;
And more and less do flock to follow him.
Northumberland
I knew of this before, but, to speak truth,
This present grief had wiped it from my mind.
Go in with me and counsel every man
The aptest way for safety and revenge.
Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed.
Never so few, and never yet more need.
They exit.