Christopher Marlowe: Accurs’d be he that first invented war!

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

British writers on peace and war

Christopher Marlowe: Parricide and filicide. While lions war, poor lambs perish.

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Christopher Marlowe
From Tamburlaine the Great (1587)

Blood is the god of war’s rich livery.

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Accurs’d be he that first invented war!
They knew not, ah, they knew not, simple men,
How those were hit by pelting cannon-shot
Stand staggering like a quivering aspen-leaf
Fearing the force of Boreas’ boisterous blasts!

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Hast thou beheld a peal of ordnance strike
A ring of pikes, mingled with shot and horse,
Whose shatter’d limbs, being toss’d as high as heaven,
Hang in the air as thick as sunny motes…
Hast thou not seen my horsemen charge the foe,
Shot through the arms, cut overthwart the hands,
Dying their lances with their streaming blood…?