====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Thomas Campion: Then bloody swords and armour should not be
Thomas Campion: Upright man needs neither towers nor armour
====
Thomas Campion
Raving war, begot
In the thirsty sands
Of the Libyan isles,
Wastes our empty fields;
What the greedy rage
Of fell wintry storms
Could not turn to spoil,
Fierce Bellona now
Has laid desolate,
Void of fruit, or hope.
Th’ eager thrifty hind,
Whose rude toil revived
Our sky-blasted earth,
Himself is but earth,
Left a scorn to fate
Through seditious arms:
And that soil, alive
Which he duly nursed,
Which him duly fed,
Dead his body feeds:
Yet not all the glebe
His tough hands manured
Now one turf affords
His poor funeral.
Thus still needy lives,
Thus still needy dies
Th’ unknown multitude.
Source