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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Edith Matilda Thomas: The Altar of Moloch
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Edith Matilda Thomas
The Dragons of the Air
There is a circle of malignant hell
Not given to the Florentine to know.
It is not hidden in the earth below,
But far aloft its fateful legions dwell.
They are not human, though from earth they rise –
They are of him, the Prince who rules the Air
The quiver of his torments on they bear –
The cities cower and fend them from the skies!
The azure and the grey of heaven they snatch
To be their banner; masked in cloud they sail,
The levin-bolts they break in murderous hail,
Up flames the palace roof, the cottage thatch.
They are not humans, they renounce their kind,
They join them with the arch-antagonist…
O world that kindly yet remains – resist!
Find means the dragons of the air to bind.
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