Olive Schreiner: Give me back my dead!

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Women writers on peace and war

Olive Schreiner: I have never met a human creature who hates war as I hate it

Olive Schreiner: The bestiality and insanity of war

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Olive Schreiner
The Cry of South Africa (1900)

Give me back my dead!
They who by kop and fountain
First saw the light upon my rocky breast!
Give back my dead,
The sons who played upon me
When childhood’s dews still rested on their heads.
Give back my dead
Whom thou hast riven from me
By arms of men loud called from earth’s farthest bound
To wet my bosom with my children’s blood!
Give back my dead,
The dead who grew upon me!