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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
J.A. Edgerton: When the cannon’s roar shall be heard no more
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J.A. Edgerton
A Song of Peace
Come sing me a song of peace,
I am tired of war:
Come, sing of the time afar,
When war shall cease.
Come sing of love in her birth,
And prophesy
Of an era when hate shall die
From off the earth.
The shedding of human blood
Is a sickening game,
Though done in the sacred name
Of human good.
Somehow we cannot forget,
And we stand appalled,
That murder, whatever called,
Is murder yet.
And we hear the echo still,
Down the aisles of time,
Of the ancient words sublime:
“Thou shalt not kill.”
I am tired of the songs of strife,
They tell of the dead;
Come, sing to me instead
The songs of life.
Come, sing of an epic bright
In the younger day,
As the earth swings on her way
Through the infinite.
Come sing of an era when,
By the dying Old,
The New shall an age unfold
Of happier men;
And the wrongs of today shall seem,
As they fade away,
Like a tale of yesterday,
And a troubled dream.
At the dawn of a century
A spirit calls,
And a vision on me falls,
Like a prophecy.
A hundred years unroll
Before my gaze,
I see the coming days
Like an open scroll.
I see the whole world
Joined hand in hand,
I see, over every land
One flag unfurled.
‘Tis the milk-white flag of peace,
And from afar
There rises a golden star
O’er the eastern seas.
And I see the wraith of war
As it disappears
Down the path of the vanished years
Forevermore.
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