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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Thomas Middleton: Selections on peace and war
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Thomas Middleton
From The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased
Cain could see, but folly struck him blind,
To kill his brother in a raging mind.
O too unhappy stroke to end two lives!
Unhappy actor in death’s tragedy,
Murdering a brother whose name murder gives,
Whose slaying action slaughters butchery:
A weeping part had earth in that same play,
For she did weep herself to death that day.
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Blood-quaffing Mars, which wash’d himself in gore,
Reign’d in her foes’ thirst slaughter-drinking hearts;
Their heads the bloody store-house of blood’s store.
Their minds made bloody streams disburs’d in parts
What was it else but butchery and hate,
To prize young infants’ blood at murder’s rate ?
But let them surfeit on their bloody cup.
Carousing to their own destruction’s health,
We drink the silver-streamed water up,
Which unexpected flow’d from wisdom’s wealth;
Declaring, by the thirst of our dry souls.
How all our foes did swim in murder’s bowls.
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Butchers unnatural, worse by their trade.
Whose house the bloody shambles of decay.
More than a slaughter-house which butchers made,
More than an Eschip, seely bodies prey:
Thorough whose hearts a bloody shambles runs;
They do not butcher beasts, but their own sons.
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