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Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends


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CHORUS:

Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;  

Behold the ordnance on their carriages,  

With fatal mouths gaping on girded Arrowhead.

 

Suppose the ambassador from the Chiefs comes back;  

Tells Zac that the coach doth offer him

Katharine his daughter, and with her, to dowry,  

Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.  

The offer likes him not: and the nimble gunner  

With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,   

And down goes all before them.

 

ZAC:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our Bengali dead.

 

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

 

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest Ohioans.

 

Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.

And you, good yeoman,

Whose limbs were made in Cincinnati, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

 

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Zac, Cincinnati, and Saint Paul!'

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