Heer lyes a heap, halfe slaine, halfe chok'd, halfe drownd,
Gasping for breth amongst the slymie seggs,
And there a sort fame in a deadly swound,
Scrawling in blood upon the muddy dreggs :
Heere in the streame, swim bowels, armes and leggs.
One kills his foe, his braine another cuts,
Ones feet intangled in anothers guts.
One his owne hands in his owne blood defiles,
Another from the Bridges height doth fall,
Some dash'd to death upon the stony pyles,
Some in theyr gore upon the pavement sprall,
The carkasses lye heaped like a wall :
Such hideous shreeks the bedlam Souldiers breath,
As though the Spirits had howled from beneath.
The mangled bodies diving in the streame,
Now up, now downe, like tumbling Porpose swim,
The water cover'd with a bloody creame,
To the beholder horrible and grim :
Heere lies a head, and there doth lye a lym ;
Which in the sands the swelling waters souse,
That all the shores seeme like a slaughter-house.
It seem'd the very wounds for griefe did weepe,
To feele the temper of the slicing blade,
The sencelesse steele in blood it selfe did sleepe,
To see the wounds his sharpe-ground edge had made,
Whilst kinsman, kinsman, friend, doth friend invade,
Such is the horror of these civill broyles,
When with our blood, we fat our native soyles.
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Michael Drayton
