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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Byron: Selections on war
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Byron
From Don Juan
O, Wellington!…
You are ‘the best of cut-throats:’ – do not start;
The phrase is Shakspeare’s, and not misapplied:
War’s a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,
Unless her cause by right be sanctified.
If you have acted once a generous part,
The world, not the world’s masters, will decide,
And I shall be delighted to learn who,
Save you and yours, have gain’d by Waterloo?
I am no flatterer – you ‘ve supp’d full of flattery:
They say you like it too -‘t is no great wonder.
He whose whole life has been assault and battery,
At last may get a little tired of thunder;
And swallowing eulogy much more than satire, he
May like being praised for every lucky blunder,
Call’d ‘Saviour of the Nations’ – not yet saved,
And ‘Europe’s Liberator’ – still enslaved.
***
To you the unflattering Muse deigns to inscribe
Truths, that you will not read in the Gazettes,
But which ‘t is time to teach the hireling tribe
Who fatten on their country’s gore, and debts,
Must be recited…
***
O ye! or we! or he! or she! reflect,
That one life saved, especially if young
Or pretty, is a thing to recollect
Far sweeter than the greenest laurels sprung
From the manure of human clay, though deck’d
With all the praises ever said or sung:
Though hymn’d by every harp, unless within
Your heart joins chorus, Fame is but a din.
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