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War
I.The beast exultant spreads the nostril wide,Snuffing a sickly hate-enkindling scent;Proud of his rage, on sudden carnage bent,He leaps, and flings the helpless guard aside.Again, again the hills are gapped and dyed,Again the hearts of waiting women spent.Is there no cooler pathway to content?Can we not heal the insanity of pride?Silence the crackle and thunder of battling guns,And drive your men to strategy of peace;Crush ere its birth the hell-begotten crime;Still theres a war that no true warrior shuns,That knows no mercy, looks for no surcease,But ghastlier battles, victories more sublime.II.Envy has slid in silence to its hole,And Peace is basking where the workers meet,And fire has purged ...
John Le Gay Brereton
IThere is no picturesqueness and no glory, No halo of romance, in war to-day. It is a hideous thing; Time would turn greyWith horror, were he not already hoaryAt sight of this vile monster, foul and gory. Yet while sweet women perish as they pray, And new-born babes are slaughtered, who dare say'Halt!' till Right pens its 'Finis' to the story!There is no pathway, but the path through blood, Out of the horrors of this holocaust.Hell has let loose its scalding crimson flood, And he who stops to argue now is lost.Not brooms of creeds, not Pacifistic wordsCan stem the tide, but swords - uplifted swords!IIYet, after Peace has turned the clean white page There shall be sorrow on the earth for years; ...
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The Next War
You young friskies who todayJump and fight in Father's hayWith bows and arrows and wooden spears,Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,Happy though these hours you spend,Have they warned you how games end?Boys, from the first time you prodAnd thrust with spears of curtain-rod,From the first time you tear and slashYour long-bows from the garden ash,Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,Binding the split tops together,From that same hour by fate you're boundAs champions of this stony ground,Loyal and true in everything,To serve your Army and your King,Prepared to starve and sweat and dieUnder some fierce foreign sky,If only to keep safe those joysThat belong to British boys,To keep young Prussians from the softScented...
Robert von Ranke Graves
Often When Warring
Often when warring for he wist not what,An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak,Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot;Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgotThe deed of grace amid the roar and reek;Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeakHe there has reached, although he has known it not.For natural mindsight, triumphing in the actOver the throes of artificial rage,Has thuswise muffled victory's peal of pride,Rended to ribands policy's specious pageThat deals but with evasion, code, and pact,And war's apology wholly stultified.1915.
Thomas Hardy
Battle Of Brunanburgh
Athelstan King,Lord among Earls,Bracelet-bestower andBaron of Barons,He with his brother,Edmund Atheling,Gaining a lifelongGlory in battle,Slew with the sword-edgeThere by Brunanburh,Brake the shield-wall,Hew'd the lindenwood,Hack'd the battleshield,Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.Theirs was a greatnessGot from their Grandsires--Theirs that so often inStrife with their enemiesStruck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.Bow'd the spoiler,Bent the Scotsman,Fell the shipcrewsDoom'd to the death.All the field with blood of the fightersFlow'd, from when first the greatSun-star of morningtide,Lamp of the Lord GodLord everlasting,Glode over earth till...
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Fighting For Conquest.
'Tis noble for to fight for home, But some nations fight to plunder, For conquest o'er the world to roam, To tear peaceful lands asunder. For to give wealth and a great name To some aspiring commander, Who wishes to acquire great fame As a modern Alexander. Statesmen and kings a war will wage, And many thousands strew the plain, Covered with gore in the carnage, Where brave and noble men are slain. Leaving their families to mourn, Now who can soothe the ills of life, To them they never shall return, No one can now cheer the poor wife. Or the sweet little orphans dear
James McIntyre
Arms And The Man. - The Ravages Of War.
This on the water: on the land a sceneWhose Epic scope is far beyond my power,For on this spot a People's fate hath beenDecided in an hour.Long was the conflict waged through weary yearsCounted from when the sturdy farmers fell:Hopes crucified, red trenches, bitter tears,Made Man another hell!See pallid women girt in woe and weeds!See little children gaunt for lack of food!Behold the catalogue of War's black deeds Where evil stands for good!See slaughtered cattle, never more to roam,Rot in the fields, while chimneys tall and bareTell in dumb pathos how some quiet home Lit up the midnight air!See that burnt crop, yon choked-up sylvan well,This yeoman slain ye corven in the sun!My GOD! shreds of a...
James Barron Hope
Policeman X. If He Would But Dare
I stood, unseen, within a sumptous room,Where one clothed all in white sat silently.So sweet his presence that a pure soft lightRayed from him, and I saw--most wondrous sight!--The Love of God shrined in the flesh once more,And glowing softly like a misted sun.His back was towards me. Had I seen his faceMethought I must have fallen. I was wrong.The door flung wide. With hasty stepCame one in royal robes and all the prideAnd pomp of majesty, and on his headA helmet with an eagle poised for flight.He stood amazed at sight of him in white,His lips apart in haughty questioning.But no words came. Breathless, he raised his handAnd gave salute as to a mightier lord,And doffed his helm, and stood. And in his eyes I sawThe reflex glory of his Mast...
William Arthur Dunkerley (John Oxenham)
Arms And The Man. - The War Horse Draws The Plough.
At last our Fathers saw the Treaty sealed,Victory unhelmed her broad, majestic brow,The Sword became a Sickle in the field, The war horse drew the plough.There is a time when men shape for their LandIts institutions 'mid some tempests' roar,Just as the waves that thunder on the strand Shape out and round the shore.Then comes a day when institutions turnAnd carve the men, or cast them into moulds;One Era trembles while volcanoes burn, Another Age beholdsThe hardened lava changed to hills and leas,With blooming glades and orchards intermixed,Vineyards which look abroad o'er purple seas, And deep foundations fixed.So, when fell Chaos like a baleful FateWhat we had won seemed bent to snatch ...
Wars And Rumours, 1920
Blood, hatred, appetite and apathy, The sodden many and the struggling strong, Who care not now though for another wrong Another myriad innocents should die. At candid savagery or oily lie We laugh, or, turning, join the noisy throng Which buries the dead with gluttony and song. Suppose this very evening from on high Broke on the world that unexampled flame The choir-thronged sky, and Thou, descending, Lord; What agony of horror, fear, and shame, For those who knew and wearied of Thy word, I dare not even think, who am confest Idle, malignant, lustful as the rest.
John Collings Squire, Sir
Disarmament
We have outgrown the helmet and cuirass,The spear, the arrow, and the javelin.These crude inventions of a cruder age,When men killed men to show their love of God,And he who slaughtered most was greatest king.We have outgrown the need of war! Should menUnite in this one thought, all war would end.Disarm the world; and let all Nations meetLike Men, not monsters, when disputes arise.When crossed opinions tangle into snarls,Let Courts untie them, and not armies cut.When State discussions breed dissensions, letUnion and Arbitration supersedeThe hell-created implements of War.Disarm the world! and bid destructive thoughtSlip like a serpent from the mortal mindDown through the marshes of oblivion. SoonA race of gods shall rise...
Country At War.
And what of home, how goes it, boys,While we die here in stench and noise?"The hill stands up and hedges windOver the crest and drop behind;Here swallows dip and wild things goOn peaceful errands to and froAcross the sloping meadow floor,And make no guess at blasting war.In woods that fledge the round hill-shoulderLeaves shoot and open, fall and moulder,And shoot again. Meadows yet showAlternate white of drifted snowAnd daisies. Children play at shop,Warm days, on the flat boulder-top,With wildflower coinage, and the waresAre bits of glass and unripe pears.Crows perch upon the backs of sheep,The wheat goes yellow: women reap,Autumn winds ruffle brook and pond,Flutter the hedge and fly beyond.So the first things ...
The War-Makers
Who are the Makers of Wars?The Kings of the earth.And who are these Kings of the earth?Only men--not always even men of worth,But claiming rule by right of birth.And Wisdom?--does that come by birth?Nay then--too often the reverse.Wise father oft has son perverse;Solomon's son was Israel's curse.Why suffer things to reason so averse?It always has been so,And only now does knowledge growTo that high point where all men know--Who would be free must strike the blow.And how long will man suffer so?Until his soul of Freedom sings,And, strengthened by his sufferings,He breaks the worn-out leading-strings,And calls to stricter reckoningsThose costliest things--unworthy Kings.Not all are worthless. ...
Attack
At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dunIn the wild purple of the glowering sun,Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroudThe menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowedWith bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,They leave their trenches, going over the top,While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop!
Siegfried Sassoon
The War After The War
I.Yonder, with eyes that tears, not distance, dim,With ears the wide worlds thickness cannot daunt,We see tumultuous miseries that hauntThe nights dead watches, hear the battle hymnOf ruin shrieking through the music grim,Where the red spectre straddles, long and gaunt,Spitting across the seas his hideous tauntAt those who nurse at home the unwounded limb.What shall we say, who, drawing indolent breath,Mark the quick pant of those who, full of hate,Drive home the steel or loose the shrieking shell,Heroes or Huns, who smite the grin of deathAnd laugh or curse beneath the blows of fate,Swept madly to the thudding heart of hell?II.O peace, be still! Let no drear whirlwind sweepOur souls about the vault, that groans ...
The Price Of Victory.
"A Victory! --a victory!"Is flashed across the wires;Speed, speed the news from State to State,Light up the signal fires!Let all the bells from all the towersA joyous peal ring out;We've gained a glorious victory,And put the foe to rout!A mother heard the chiming bells;Her joy was mixed with pain."Pray God," she said, "my gallant boyBe not among the slain!"Alas for her! that very hourOutstretched in death he lay,The color from his fair, young faceHad scarcely passed away.His nerveless hand still grasped the sword.He never more might wield,His eyes were sealed in dreamless sleepUpon that bloody field.The chestnut curls his mother oftHad stroked in fondest pride,Neglected hung ia clotted locks,
Horatio Alger, Jr.
Monday in the courtyard of the barracks
The heat sticks closely to the gun and to the hand.It pricks the eyes. Nothing remained forgotten.The troops stepped, half drunk, into the fire.The non-coms stand rigidly in front.The glaring earth is a dead carousel.Nothing stirs. No one drops down. No streaked sky flies.Only rarely a hoarse barking tears apart the blue sowWhich lies on the stone barracks.Now the army leaves me alone.Who still pays attention to me. They got usedTo my strange civilian eyes long ago.On maneuvers I am half dreaming,And as we march I compose poems.But war comes. There was peace too long.No more good times. Trumpets screechDeep into your heart. And all the nights are burning.You freeze in tents. You're hot. You're hungry.You d...
Alfred Lichtenstein
Out UV "Politicks."
I."I'll tell yer what," said Uncle Zeke, down at the country store,"I'd been a farmer all my life--fur twenty year or more--Until one day my noddle here, it got plumb out o' fix,Er-swellin' with the idy that I's made fur politicks.II."I'd been ter hear them fellers speak, an' rip an' rant an' rave,When 'lection time's er-comin' on, who tell yer how ter saveTher kentry frum tarnation ruin, by sendin' only menThat's fit ter draw ther salaries, an' honest--jest like them.III."So listen, boys--yer'll profit by ther story that I tell--I left ther farm ter 'lectioneer an' run fur constable;I wouldn't hearken ter my wife--she said I'd lost my wit,An' as fur holdin' offices--she knowed I wusn't fit.
George W. Doneghy