Tamburlaine the Great — Part 1
Have hoisted up their slaughter'd carcasses. TAMBURLAINE. A sight as baneful to their souls, I think, As are Thessalian drugs or mithridate:      But go, my lords, put the rest to the sword.            [Exeunt all except TAMBURLAINE.]       Ah, fair Zenocrate!—divine Zenocrate! Fair is too foul an epithet for thee,—      That in thy passion 262 for thy country's love, And fear to see thy kingly father's harm, With hair dishevell'd wip'st thy watery cheeks; And, like to Flora in her morning's pride, Shaking her silver tresses in the air, Rain'st on the earth resolved 263 pearl in showers, And sprinklest sapphires on thy shining face, Where Beauty, mother to the Muses, sits, And comments volumes with her ivory pen, Taking instructions from thy flowing eyes; Eyes, when that Ebena steps to heaven, 264 In silence of thy solemn evening's walk, Making the mantle of the richest night, The moon, the planets, and the meteors, light; There angels in their crystal armours fight 265 A doubtful battle with my tempted thoughts For Egypt's freedom and the Soldan's life, His life that so consumes Zenocrate; Whose sorrows lay more siege unto my soul Than all my army to Damascus' walls; And neither Persia's 266 sovereign nor the Turk Troubled my senses with conceit of foil      So much by much as doth Zenocrate. What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then? If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, And every sweetness that inspir'd their hearts, Their minds, and muses on admired themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still 267 From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem's period, And all combin'd in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest.      But how unseemly is it for my sex, My discipline of arms and chivalry, My nature, and the terror of my name, To harbour thoughts effeminate and faint! Save only that in beauty's just applause, With whose instinct the soul of man is touch'd; And every warrior that is rapt with love Of fame, of valour, and of victory, Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits:      I thus conceiving, 268 and subduing both, That which hath stoop'd the chiefest of the gods, Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven, To feel the lovely warmth of shepherds' flames, And mask in cottages of strowed reeds, Shall give the world to note, for all my 
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