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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Women writers on peace and war
Charlotte Turner Smith: The lawless soldiers’ victims
Charlotte Turner Smith: Statesmen! ne’er dreading a scar, let loose the demons of war
Charlotte Turner Smith: Thus man spoils Heaven’s glorious works with blood!
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Charlotte Turner Smith
From On the Origin of Flattery
Unhappy man, by vice and folly tost,
Found in the storms of life his quiet lost,
While Envy, Avarice, and Ambition, hurl’d
Discord and death around the warring world;
Then the blest peasant left his fields and fold,
And barter’d love and peace for power and gold;
Left his calm cottage and his native plain,
In search of wealth to tempt the faithless main;
Or, braving danger, in the battle stood,
And bathed his savage hands in human blood;
No longer then, his woodland walks among,
The shepherd lad his genuine passion sung…
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