Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HATE, by HALA JEAN HAMMOND


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HATE, by                    
First Line: Peace - will you buy it with blood and tears?
Last Line: Black hatred.
Subject(s): Death; Hate; Peace; War; Dead, The


Peace ... will you buy it with blood and tears?
With women despoiled, with children's dark fears?
Crushed under the wheels, men ... give in vain;
Death-masked are their faces, bled white of all pain ...
But deep in the earth-holes hearing always the rain ...
Of shrapnel.

Conquering ... conquered! Bend the knee
To bayonet-blazoned apostasy,
Seeding in souls; strange plants to grow
Out of its loins; and who to know
Whither the wind its pollen shall blow
At midnight?

The heavens are brass to cannons' boom;
And rent the earth with a hell-simoon
Led hard by Death. ... Let us go away. ...
No, not to preach, nor even to pray;
But with murderous blade to smite, to slay,
Black hatred.





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