Peace Should Not Come

Peace should not come along this foul, earth way.
Peace should not come, until we cleanse the path.
God waited for us; now in awful wrath
He pours the blood of men out day by day
To purify the highroad for her feet.
Why, what would Peace do, in a world where hearts
Are filled with thoughts like poison-pointed darts?
It were not meet, surely it were not meet
For Peace to come, and with her white robes hide
These industries of death - these guns and swords, -
These uniformed, hate-filled, destructive hordes, -
These hideous things, that are each nation's pride.
So long as men believe in armed might
Let arms be brandished.    Let not Peace be sought
Until the race-heart empties out all thought
Of blows and blood, as arguments for Right.
The world has never had enough of war,
Else war were not.    Now let the monster stand,
Until he slays himself with his own hand;
Though no man knows what he is fighting for.
Then in the place where wicked cannons stood
Let Peace erect her shrine of Brotherhood.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet, born on November 5, 1850, and died on October 30, 1919. She was known for her works expressing optimistic views and moral lessons. Her most famous book was 'Poems of Passion'. Her poem 'Solitude' contains the famous lines, 'Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone'. Over her career, Wilcox became popularly known as a 'people's poet'.

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English

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A Plea To Peace

When mighty issues loom before us, all
The petty great men of the day seem small,
Like pigmies standing in a blaze of light
Before some grim majestic mountain-height.
War, with its bloody and impartial hand,
Reveals the hidden weakness of a land,
Uncrowns the heroes trusting Peace has made
Of men whose honour is a thing of trade,
And turns the searchlight full on many a place
Where proud conventions long have masked disgrace.
O lovely Peace! as thou art fair be wise.
Demand great men, and great men shall arise
To do thy bidding.    Even as warriors come,
Swift at the call of bugle and of drum,
So at the voice of Peace, imperative
As bugle's call, shall heroes spring to live
For country and for thee.    In every land,
In every age, men are what times deman...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Paean Of Peace

With ever some wrong to be righting,
    With self ever seeking for place,
The world has been striving and fighting
    Since man was evolved out of space.
Bold history into dark regions
    His torchlight has fearlessly cast,
He shows us tribes warring in legions,
    In jungles of ages long passed.

Religion, forgetting her station,
    Forgetting her birthright from God,
Set nation to warring with nation
    And scattered dissension abroad.
Dear creeds have made men kill each other,
    Fair faith has bred hate and despair,
And brother has battled with brother
    Because of a difference in prayer.

But earth has grown wiser and kinder,
    For man is evolving a soul:
From wars of an age that was blinder,
    We rise to a peace-gird...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

War

I

There is no picturesqueness and no glory,
    No halo of romance, in war to-day.
    It is a hideous thing; Time would turn grey
With horror, were he not already hoary
At sight of this vile monster, foul and gory.
    Yet while sweet women perish as they pray,
    And new-born babes are slaughtered, who dare say
'Halt!' till Right pens its 'Finis' to the story!
There is no pathway, but the path through blood,
    Out of the horrors of this holocaust.
Hell has let loose its scalding crimson flood,
    And he who stops to argue now is lost.
Not brooms of creeds, not Pacifistic words
Can stem the tide, but swords - uplifted swords!

II

Yet, after Peace has turned the clean white page
    There shall be sorrow on the earth for years;
 ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Crimes Of Peace

Musing upon the tragedies of earth,
Of each new horror which each hour gives birth,
Of sins that scar and cruelties that blight
Life's little season, meant for man's delight,
Methought those monstrous and repellent crimes
Which hate engenders in war-heated times,
To God's great heart bring not so much despair
As other sins which flourish everywhere
And in all times - bold sins, bare-faced and proud,
Unchecked by college, and by Church allowed,
Lifting their lusty heads like ugly weeds
Above wise precepts and religious creeds,
And growing rank in prosperous days of peace.
Think you the evils of this world would cease
With war's cessation?
    If God's eyes know tears,
Methinks He weeps more for the wasted years
And the lost meaning of this earthly life -

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Disarmament

We have outgrown the helmet and cuirass,
The spear, the arrow, and the javelin.
These crude inventions of a cruder age,
When men killed men to show their love of God,
And he who slaughtered most was greatest king.
We have outgrown the need of war!
    Should men
Unite in this one thought, all war would end.

Disarm the world; and let all Nations meet
Like Men, not monsters, when disputes arise.
When crossed opinions tangle into snarls,
Let Courts untie them, and not armies cut.
When State discussions breed dissensions, let
Union and Arbitration supersede
The hell-created implements of War.
Disarm the world! and bid destructive thought
Slip like a serpent from the mortal mind
Down through the marshes of oblivion.    Soon
A race of gods shall rise...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Thoughts On Peace.

Still e'er that shrine defiance rears its head,
Which rolls in sullen murmurs o'er the dead,
That shrine which conquest, as it stems the flood.
Too often tinges deep with human blood;
Still o'er the land stern devastation reigns,
Its giant mountains, and its spreading plains,
Where the dark pines, their heads all gloomy, wave,
Or rushing cataracts, loud-sounding, lave
The precipice, whose brow with awful pride
Tow'rs high above, and scorns the foaming tide;
The village sweet, the forest stretching far,
Groan undistinguish'd, 'midst the shock of war.
There, the rack'd matron sees her son expire,
There, clasps the infant son his murder'd sire,
While the sad virgin on her lover's face,
Weeps, with the last farewel, the last embrace,
And the lone widow too, with f...

Thomas Gent