==== Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts British writers on peace and war Joseph Fawcett: War Elegy ==== Joseph FawcettFrom The Art of War See yon pavilion’d Council sitting roundSerene and solemn! mind illuming mind!Reason’s confederated rays thrown out.In intellectual alliance firm!Say wherefore meets the ring of rationals,With light collective luminous? – to frameSome fair harmonious plan of general wealWith legislative wisdom? – or to seek,With philosophic amity of soul,Where Science, coy recluse, conceal’d resides?No, not for this the sapient circle sits!Yon tent is the dire cabinet of Death!Insatiate sovereign! with the scythe of TimeUnsatisfied, that craves th’ assistant sword!Those are his ministers! in ruin wise;Sages of laughter; devastation’s seers;Doctors of desolation! – Yonder, lo!At work mechanic Wit! by whom weak manHis might extends, and finds in knowledge pow’r!The lucid labour fee! Is it to aidBenignant manufacture? to uplift,Commerce, aloft in air thy weighty wealth?Lend new convenience, new delight to life?Plane to yet smoother floor its level walks,And plant along them flow’rs of lovelier glow?Dire, dire reverse! Fall’n Ingenuity,Depravid, degenerate from her native sphere,On tragic engines her loft genius spends;And, cruelly acute, pursues aloneDiscoveries of death! – Distracted Art,Whose lovely office ’tis to emulateNature in bounties and in smiles alone,With her severities perversely vies!Storms she invents! inclemencies conțrives!And teaches Weakness to be terrible.Tremendous mimic of the tempest, manCopies th’ artillery of angry Jove,Around him artful clouds and darkness rolls,To lighten learns, to forge and fling his bolts,While thousands at a stroke his thunders rive,And blasted towns before his flashes fall!Or, boweld in the earth, he latent breedsThe crafty earthquake, subterranean rageIngenious gend’ring! In the hallow hellHis hands have scoop’d with dark infernal fraud,Disposing death, – th’ artificer of ills,Laborious scholar of malignant things,Studious essays, and terribly attains,To shake the strong foundations of the ground,Strew it with wide-spread wreck, and emulateThe final ruin! View yon vehiclesWhose wondrous road is through the world of waves;That give to eager man the morning’s wings;Whose cordage complicate and canvas-craftEmploy the air to push ’em on their way,And make the winds their spur! Mansions immense!Whose swelling walls a multitude inclose,Yet light and volant gliding, as the fowlThat sail the firmament! Of human skillThe prodigy and pride! Fram’d to conveySocial mankind remote mankind to meet,To know, to love, enlighten and relieve!To bear from shore to shore, in fair supply,Of earth and mind the produce! fruits and truthsIn blissful harmony commute, and makeThe world but one! Behold! distracting scene!The floating houses of the sea, arrang’dIn adverse rows, advance! the moving streetsEach other meet! ah! with no friendly front!Freighted with thunder, they are come to holdCommerce of deaths! to show the astonish’d seasSuch tempest as the winds ne’er blew! to teachThe tame commotion of the elementsHow ships to shatter! to out-roar, out-spitAll air-brew’d storms, and in derision mockTheir modest madness, meek, insipid sceneOf sober tumult! – See all Nature’s gifts,Given but for good, made instruments of ill!From the dug earth educ’d, behold that ore ,Of higheſt worth, in richest plenty giv’n,His bounty such who stock’d the ball He built,Of friendly edge susceptive, form’d to serve,With smooth incision, useful Art’s fair ends,See its fine point employ’d, ah! not to fetchForth from the furrow’d earth the golden bread;Call gladsome Plenty o’er her plains to laugh;Or prune with economic cut awayHer wasteful growth; – but, amputation foul!Lop human life, and with an impious edgeWith purple dropping, plough the flesh of man!Behold the heav’n-born element, bestow’dThe genial friend of generous health to glow,The social hearth to animate, supplyOur absent suns, and gaily gild the houseOf harmless pleasure! see it turn’d againstLife’s lovely flame! th’ excited spirit see,Collision-call’d, springs sparkling from his cell,To dart the nitrous wrath, the red-hot death,To youth’s light heart, and stop the bounding life!To bid the broken bone long time be rack’dIn the dread house of Pain! with bursting rageUpward an heap of shatter’d bodies shoot,From earth exploded to the sky! fair pilesThat slowly rose, uprear’d by patient toil,With furious haste lay low! or with harsh heat,Unlike his fire’s, the gently piercing sun,Sear the fair fruitage his bland beams had nurs’d,And his mild fervours mellow’d into food!With fierce unfilial force (how much misus’d!Child of life’s cherisher!) his waving workImpious undo, consume the yellow year,And smiling Ceres to a cinder change!
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