Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ARMED PEACE; JANUARY, 1899, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ARMED PEACE; JANUARY, 1899, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The hopes of humanity fly, the doubts and the terrors remain
Last Line: Craves the flesh of the peoples for bread, and the blood of their slaughter for wine.
Subject(s): Peace; War


THE hopes of Humanity fly, the doubts and the terrors remain,
Knowledge droops and the Churches sigh, and the world is girdled with pain,
The shadow of War broods deep, alike over mainland and sea,
And men's eyes stare vacant of sleep for thought of the evils to be.
Man sickens as under a curse, and only his burdens increase,
Scarce are War's dread calamities worse, than the blight of an Armed Peace,
Deflowered is his innocent youth, brought low is the Pride of the Race,
With its wings that would soar to the Truth, fallen earthward in deep disgrace.
The young men sober and chaste, strong sires of the ages to come,
On the stews or the tavern waste the temperate virtues of home;
The maidens their destined wives, in pure wedlock and motherhood sweet,
Pine unwedded through lonely lives or dishonour the pitiless street.
Allured and engrossed by the cost of the engines of slaughter and pain,
Half the fruits of Science are lost, spent on deadly devices in vain;
Overburdened, fettered and bound, faint, despairing, ill-housed and ill-fed,
The workers lie crushed to the ground in a bitter striving for bread;
In kennels obscene they are pent, where hardly a hound should dwell,
While the wealth that might free them is spent on a nightmare of imminent hell.
Scarce a pittance is left men to spare for the needs of the pitiful throng,
Who assail them with impotent prayer in vain, tho' the suffrage be strong;
Nor succour to give to the old, the feeble, the outcasts forlorn,
Who in nakedness, hunger, and cold curse God that they ever were born;
Nor clear voice of learning to rouse the slumbering spirit and brain,
Nor Homes of Compassion to house the sad sum of incurable pain.
For Moloch cries loud for his dead with a thunderous roar, and his shrine
Craves the flesh of the peoples for bread, and the blood of their slaughter for wine.





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