Weaponed

1846, Thomas Francis Meagher, The Secession Speech on the “Peace Resolutions” and the Exclusion of the “Nation” Newspaper from the Repeal Association, 26 July, 1846, in Arthur Griffith, editor, Meagher of the Sword, Dublin: M.H. Gill & Son, 1916, p. 36, The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with; but it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone avail against battalioned despotism.

Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon’d; / Here is my journey's end, here is my butt, / And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

[…] Wamba, though so imperfectly weaponed, did not hesitate to rush in and assist the Black Knight to rise.

Then he cast his eyes on the road that entered the Market-stead from the north, and he saw thereon many men gathered; and he wotted not what they were; for though there were weapons amongst them, yet were they not all weaponed, as far as he could see.

But across the entry barred / Straddled the revolted guard, / Weaponed and accoutred well / From the arsenals of hell; […]

1992, X. J. Kennedy, “Terse Elegy for J. V. Cunningham,” first published in Dark Horses: New Poems; reprinted in In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New and Selected Poems, 1955-2007, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, p. 113, Though with a slash a Pomp’s gut he could slit, On his own work he worked his weaponed wit And penned with patient skill and lore immense Prodigious mind, keen ear, rare common sense, Only those words he could crush down no more Like matter pressured to a dwarf star’s core.

[Y]et now, if any two be but once handed in the church and have tasted in any sort of the nuptial bed, let them find themselves never so mistaken in their dispositions through any error, concealment or misadventure, that through their different tempers, thoughts and constitutions they can neither be to one another a remedy against loneliness nor live in any union or contentment all their days, yet they shall, so they be but found suitably weaponed to the least possibility of sensual enjoyment, be made, spite of antipathy, to fadge together, and combine as they may to their unspeakable wearisomeness and despair of all sociable delight in the ordinance which God established to that very end.

Which will win? The man with only a superficial knowledge, going half way back, or the man with a knowledge that is thoroughly grounded in the sources of the law? But it will be said that the chances are that neither will ever have gone so far back, and thus one will be as well-weaponed as the other.