Classic Poem

And this I hate—not men, nor flag, nor race,
But only War with its wild, grinning face.
God strike it till its eyes be blind as night
And all its members tremble with affright!
Oh, let it hear in its death agony
The wail of mothers for their best-loved ones,
And on its head
Descend the venomed curses of the sons
Who followed it, deluded, where its guns
Had dyed the daisies red.

All these I hate—war and its panoply,
The lie that hides its ghastly mockery,
That makes its glories out of women's tears,
The toil of peasants through the burdened years,
The legacy of long disease that preys
On bone and body in the afterdays.
God's curses pour,
Until it shrivel with its votaries
And die away in its own fiery seas,
That nevermore
Its dreadful call of murder may be heard;
A thing accursed in very deed and word
From blood-drenched shore to shore!

And this I hate—not men, nor flag, nor race,
But only War with its wild, grinning face.
God strike it till its eyes be blind as night
And all its members tremble with affright!
Oh, let it hear in its death agony
The wail of mothers for their best-loved ones,
And on its head
Descend the venomed curses of the sons
Who followed it, deluded, where its guns
Had dyed the daisies red.

All these I hate—war and its panoply,
The lie that hides its ghastly mockery,
That makes its glories out of women's tears,
The toil of peasants through the burdened years,
The legacy of long disease that preys
On bone and body in the afterdays.
God's curses pour,
Until it shrivel with its votaries
And die away in its own fiery seas,
That nevermore
Its dreadful call of murder may be heard;
A thing accursed in very deed and word
From blood-drenched shore to shore!