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IX

O, heinous War, Hell’s very incarnation!

Whose countenance is black with darkest hate,

Whose eyes have serpent’s gleam of greed and lust,

And fiendish satisfaction, when the dust

Of God’s fair earth with precious blood is sate,

Who laughs at the destruction of a nation.

Whose breath is pois’nous fumes and dire disease,

And darting flames, devouring man’s abodes,

Whose voice with terror fills all living things,

And nought attracts except the vulture’s wings,

Its rending roar the very heaven goads

Until the dark’ning cloud a-weeping flees.

Whose brutish hands, with gore and grime polluted,

Are strangling innocents and ripping wombs,

And gagging Virtue’s cry, and sundering

The maiden from her mother; plundering

The aged and the sick, yea, even the tombs

Of those “at rest” are by this monster looted.

It rules the empires, and it rules the seas,

It is the prince of power in the air,

And kings and nations worship it with fear,

But drunk with blood they loud and wildly cheer,

And think its glory great beyond compare,

Yea, worth all loss and human miseries.

O, Christ, who stood on storm-tossed Galilee,

Reproaching evil, saying: “Peace be still!”

So all the fury of the storm and wave

Abated, and the struggling ship was safe,

Speak thou again that word divine, until

The world shall hear, and war shall cease to be!

O, may the day-spring from on High appear,

When this foul monster shall be chained in Hell,

When man, freed from its tyranny, shall be

The blessed of the Lord, in harmony

With every race which under heaven dwell,

And all his life be like a golden year!