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~ By
Courtesy of Others ~
Beneath the Blood-bedraggled
Battle-standard
Through forests and hills trudged the rain-soaked
warriors
Seeking rendezvous with the harboured ships at Calais.
Intercepted from the south by agitators,
The English fought for their lives on Saint Crispin's Day.
Shoulder to shoulder, four ranks deep, knights
took centre.
Flanked in the fields above the pass, archers drave stakes.
From the fore came vanguard of the French contender,
Whose battles slithered through the narrow gorge like snakes.
From the wooded bluffs above, longbowmen rained
hell;
An endless, iron-tipped hail of pain descended
And a forest of bills and pikes stretched from the fell
As the French drew nigh; a storm of steel impended.
All plate and maille was smothered in blood, mud
and rain.
Unarmoured saw their cloth drenched in the horrid mix.
Though King Henry's blood-brothers held off the French train
Of armoured knights who weighed down in the mud like bricks.
Assailed by the constant punch of arrows' brawn
And trapped by knee-deep slog, they made little assay.
Henry's line fervently charged, fierce as a lion,
And the French spirits plunged into utter dismay.
Three hours later, there stood the Lancastrian
King
Amidst his entourage, with victory rendered.
Near three heaps of head-high French slain, Englishmen drink,
There, beneath the blood bedraggled battle-standard.
© Justin Douglas Blackford
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