Our Conquering Swords

Christopher Marlowe 1564 (Canterbury, Kent) – 1593 (Deptford, Kent)



Our 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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 09, 2023

38 sec read
197

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLKMNN
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 699
Words 126
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 16

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Modern scholars count Marlowe among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights and based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later became the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe's plays are the first to use blank verse, which became the standard for the era, and are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the taste of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed. Events in Marlowe's life were sometimes as extreme as those found in his dramas. Reports of Marlowe’s death in 1593 were particularly infamous in his day and are contested by scholars today due to a lack of good documentation. Traditionally, the playwright’s death has been blamed on a long list of conjectures, including a barroom fight, church libel, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright, and espionage from the highest level: Elizabeth I of England’s Privy Council. An official coroner account of Marlowe's death was only revealed in 1925, but it did little to persuade all scholars that it told the whole story nor did it eliminate the uncertainties present in his biography. more…

All Christopher Marlowe poems | Christopher Marlowe Books

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