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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Joseph Cottle: Selections on war
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Joseph Cottle
From War, A Fragment
What countless pangs to such have owed their birth!
What blood and murder stain’d the smiling earth!
To grant these Tyrants unexplor’d domain,
How many a fruitful clime has desert lain!
To please these monsters in their lordly pride,
How many an eye hath wept, and bosom sigh’d!
Shepherds, unskill’d in war’s infernal trade,
Torn from their cots to wield the murderer’s blade;
Peasants, with hearts revolting at the fight,
Compell’d to sack the town, and dare the fight;
Till War’s malignant deeds, and wizard spell
Transform them, saints of light, to fiends of hell.
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Yet let him know, and those who wars admire,
Whose music charms them, or whose garbs inspire,
On the red plain, where putrid thousands lie,
Each leaves a friend to heave the pitying sigh,
With grief as poignant, as the pangs that wait
The proud funereal honors of the great.
Each carcase by the carrion worms carest,
Felt as we feel, ere slept his throbbing breast;
A rapid survey cast on friends afar;
And, whilst Destruction roll’d his scithed car,
Curst, in his pangs, the murderers of mankind.
And dropt the tear for those he left behind.
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