OUR CONQUERING SWORDS
by: Christopher Marlowe
(1564-1593)
- UR conquering
swords shall marshall us the way
- We use to march upon the slaughter'd foe,
- Trampling their bowels with our horses' hoofs,
- Brave horses bred on the white Tartarian hills.
- My camp is like to Julius Caesar's host,
- That never fought but had the victory;
- Nor in Pharsalia was there such hot war
- As these, my followers, willingly would have.
- Legions of spirits, fleeting in the air,
- Direct our bullets and our weapons' points,
- And make your strokes to wound the senseless light;
- And when she sees our bloody colours spread,
- Then Victory begins to take her flight,
- Resting herself upon my milk-white tent--
- But come, my lords, to weapons let us fall;
- The field is ours, the Turk, his wife, and all.
"Our Conquering Swords"
is reprinted from Tamburlaine the Great. Christopher Marlowe.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919. |
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