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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
William Stokes: Selections on peace and war
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William Stokes
To the Genius of War
As Embodied in the Warrior
Forbear, thou man of blood, forbear,
To claim a birth Divine;
No Son of Heaven can be the heir
Of passions such as thine.
Thy boasted trade, thy sole employ,
Is death to deal around;
The Peace of nations to destroy,
Wherever man is found.
The wide-spread earth, through all her lands,
Has mourned thy kindred tread;
And widows raise their pray’rful hands,
For vengeance on thy head.
In Europe’s polished courts, the seeds
Of hatred thou hast sown;
And yonder Southern island bleeds
With sorrows all thine own.
In thronging East, or far-spread West,
Or where the Niger rolls;
Thy murd’rous train has proved the pest
And curse, of human souls.
No sex, no nation, and no clime,
Has ‘scap’d thy cruel rage;
Thy plague has flow’d throughout all time,
And spread through every age.
And shall that plague, with curses rife,
Pass down to other times;
And spread around the seeds of strife,
To poison other climes?
Shall men be found for wealth or gain,
To doom a world to woe?
And all that earth can feel of pain,
Give earth that all to know?
Learn, then, man to murder given,
Note thou the mandate well;
“The work of Peace came down from heaven,
The work of War from hell.”
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