Horace Smith: The trade of man-butchery. The soldier and the sailor.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Horace Smith: Selections on peace and war
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Horace Smith
From The Recantation
A Soldier? – What! a bravo paid
To make man-butchery a trade –
A Jack-a-dandy varlet,
Who sells his liberty, – perchance
His very soul’s inheritance –
For feathers, lace, and scarlet!
 
A Sailor? – worse! he’s doomed to trace
With treadmill drudgery the space
From foremast to the mizen;
A slave to the tyrannic main,
Till some kind bullet comes to brain
The brainless in his prison –