2/28/2015

From 'The Atheist's Tragedy' (1611) By Cyril Tourneur

This is from a rarely performed play of Tourneur's, less famous than the Revenger's Tragedy which is now largely attributed to Thomas Middleton, rather than, as it once was, Tourneur himself.
Walking next day upon the fatall shore,
Among the slaughter'd bodies of their men 
Which the full-stomack'd Sea had cast upon
The sands, it was m' unhappy chance to light
Upon a face, whose favour when it liv'd, 
My astonish'd minde inform'd me I had seen. 
He lay in's armour, as if that had been
His coffine; and the weeping Sea, like one 
Whose milder temper doth lament the death 
Of him whom in his rage he slew, runnes up
The Shoare, embraces him, kisses his cheeke,
Goes backe againe, and forces up the sandes
To burie him, and ev'rie time it parts 
Sheds teares upon him, till at last
As if It could no longer endure to see the man
Whom it had slaine, yet loath to leave him 
With a kinde of unresolv'd unwilling pace, 
Winding her waves one in another, 
Like a man that foldes his armes or wrings his hands
For griefe, ebb'd from the body, and descends
As if it would sinke downe into the earth, 
And hide it selfe for shame of such a deede.

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