Robert Browning: Far and wide the victims of our warfare strew the plain

====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Robert Browning: Peace rises within them ever more and more
Robert Browning: They sent a million fighters forth South and North
====
Robert Browning
From Jochanan Hakkadosh
“Say there’s a tyrant by whose death we earn
Freedom, and justify a war to wage:
Good! – were we only able to discern
“Exactly how to reach and catch and cage
Him only and no innocent beside!
Whereas the folk whereon war wreaks its rage
” – How shared they his ill-doing? Far and wide
The victims of our warfare strew the plain,
Ten thousand dead, whereof not one but died
“In faith that vassals owed their suzerain
Life: therefore each paid tribute, – honest soul, –
To that same Right and Good ourselves are fain
“To call exclusively our end…”

Source