Peace ... will you buy it with blood and tears? With women despoiled, with children's dark fears? Crushed under the wheels, men ... give in vain; Death-masked are their faces, bled white of all pain ... But deep in the earth-holes hearing always the rain ... Of shrapnel. Conquering ... conquered! Bend the knee To bayonet-blazoned apostasy, Seeding in souls; strange plants to grow Out of its loins; and who to know Whither the wind its pollen shall blow At midnight? The heavens are brass to cannons' boom; And rent the earth with a hell-simoon Led hard by Death. ... Let us go away. ... No, not to preach, nor even to pray; But with murderous blade to smite, to slay, Black hatred. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...OH! SUSANNA! by STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER RETALIATION by OLIVER GOLDSMITH LAVENDER'S BLUE (1) by MOTHER GOOSE IN THE DEEP WHITE SNOW by ANNE ATWOOD TO MR. WILLIAM BASSE UPON THE NOW PUBLISHING OF HIS POEMS by RALPH BATHURST PSALM 137 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE |