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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Henry Vaughan: Let us ‘midst noise and war of peace and mirth discuss
Henry Vaughan: The Men of War
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Henry Vaughan
From Abel’s Blood
Sad, purple well! Whose bubbling eye
Did first against a murd’rer cry;
Whose streams, still vocal, still complain
Of bloody Cain:
And now at evening are as red
As in the morning when first shed.
If single thou
— Though single voices are but low, —
Couldst such a shrill and long cry rear
As speaks still in thy Maker’s ear,
What thunders shall those men arraign
Who cannot count those they have slain,
Who bathe not in a shallow flood,
But in a deep, wide sea of blood?
A sea, whose loud waves cannot sleep,
But deep still calleth upon deep:
Whose urgent sound, like unto that
Of many waters, beateth at
The everlasting doors above…
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