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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
Mary Heron: Bid brazen-throated war and discord cease
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Mary Heron
From Ode on the General Peace
Britannia! rear thy drooping head,
The noisy din of war is fled;
Celestial peace from heaven descends,
To this blest isle her course she bends,
And waves the olive-branch on high,
Diffusing fragrance thro’ the sky.
Hark! Albion’s joyful shores rebound,
Her rocks re-echo back the sound!
The listening plains
Repeat the strains,
And hail the goddess all around.
See smiling plenty in her train,
Attendant on her blissful reign;
Enfeebled commerce quickly springs,
Exerts her powers, expands her wings,
Shakes off dull sloth, inactive sleep,
And boldly launches thro’ the deep…
O direful scene! what streams of blood,
With crimson stain the sanguine flood!
O dreadful sound! what shrieks arise,
And dismal groans ascend the skies!
Hark! how the bursting cannons roar,
And loud explosions shake the shore;
Array’d in every horrid form,
Death rides triumphant in the storm;
With terror crown’d,
He stalks around,
There bids the raging flames devour,
And Ocean smoke with human gore.
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