Titus Andronicus

Upon Viewing Bruegel's "Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus"




"Even now I curse the day, and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,
Where in I did not some notorious ill:
As kill a man, or else devise his death;
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it;
Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself;
Set deadly enmity between two friends;
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears,
Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.
Tut! I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more."

William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus