Women writers on peace and war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Women writers on peace and war
Maria Abdy: May the gentle Dove of Peace extend her snowy pinions o’er us
Lucy Aikin: Gentle Peace with healing hand returns
Lucy Aikin: Sickening I turn on yonder plain to mourn the widows and the slain
Emily Gilmore Alden: The world should write more victories, the victories of love
Ellen P. Allerton: Peace After War
Joanna Baillie: And shall we think of war?
Joanna Baillie: Do children return from rude jarring war?
Joanna Baillie: Making his simple audience to shrink with tales of war and blood
Joanna Baillie: Thy native land, freed from the ills of war, a land of peace!
H. Lavinia Baily: By the Sea. An Argument for Peace.
H. Lavinia Baily: A Lost Song?
Josephine Turck Baker: To the Mothers of the Martyred Dead upon the Field of Battle
Isabella Banks: Absolve our souls from blood shed in our country’s cause
Isabella Banks: The bugle of war, the bugle of peace
Isabella Banks: “Glory, glory, glory!” As if murder were not sin!
Isabella Banks: Lay down weapons, war should cease
Anna Laetitia Barbauld: Peace and Shepherd
Anna Laetitia Barbauld: The storm of horrid war rolls dreadful on
Anna Laetitia Barbauld: War’s least horror is th’ ensanguined field
Mary Barber: The officer’s widow
Charlotte Alington Barnard: Peace Hovers
Katharine Lee Bates: Selections on war and peace
Katharine Lee Bates: Carnage! Bayonet, bomb and shell! Merry reading for hell!
Katharine Lee Bates: Children of the War
Katharine Lee Bates: The doomful, mad torpedo, the colossal slaughter-guns
Katharine Lee Bates: Fodder for Cannon
Katharine Lee Bates: Marching Feet
Katharine Lee Bates: When the Millennium Comes
Aphra Behn: No rough sound of war’s alarms
Aphra Behn: The pen triumphs over the sword
Ida Whipple Benham: The Friend of Peace
Ida Whipple Benham: War’s weeding
Ida Whipple Benham: The White Prince of peace
Adelaide George Bennett: The Peace-Pipe Quarry
Elizabeth Bentley: On the return of celestial peace
Elizabeth Bentley: Terror-striking War shalt be banish’d far
Matilda Betham: All the horrid charms of war
Jean Blewett: Above the din of martial clamor, a crying in the dark
Jean Blewett: The doves are nesting in the cannons grim
Mathilde Blind: All vile things that batten on disaster follow feasting in the wake of war
Mathilde Blind: Reaping War’s harvest grim and gory
Mathilde Blind: Widowing the world of men to win the world
Jane Bowdler: War’s deadly futility
Vera Mary Brittain: August, 1914
Laura Helena Brower: Heritage. The blighted fruit of war.
Frances Brown: An avenger mightier than war
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Exalt the name of Peace and leave those rusty wars that eat the soul
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: War’s human harvest
Amelia Josephine Burr: Two Viewpoints
Alice Cary: Better dwell the lowliest shepherd of Arcadia’s bowers
Mary Chandler: The noise of war is hushed
Anne Cleveland Cheney: All Ye Who Pass By
Caroline Clive: The bloody words of ruffian war
Florence Earle Coates: The New Mars
Elizabeth Cobbold: Earth’s bosom drenching with her children’s blood
Margaret Postgate Cole: They fell, like snowflakes wiping out the noon
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge: Lilies and Doves
Elizabeth Connor: This World War
Eliza Cook: Selections on peace and war
Eliza Cook: Crimson battlefield. When the world shall be spread with tombless dead.
Eliza Cook: I felt a shuddering horror lurk, to think I’d mingled in such work
Eliza Cook: No bloodstain lingers there. The plough and the spear.
Eliza Cook: Not where bullet, sword, and shield lie strown with the gory slain
Eliza Cook: Who can love the laurel wreath, plucked from the gory field of death?
Isabella Valancy Crawford: The Forging of the Sword
Isabella Valancy Crawford: Peace
Isabella Valancy Crawford: War
Ann Batten Cristall: Pity, Liberty, and Peace
Ann Batten Cristall: Relief for nature, man at war with themselves
Maria Briscoe Croker: War and Peace
Martha Foote Crow: There is no Christ left in all those carnage-loving lands
Mary L. Cummins: The News of War
Mary L. Cummins: The Women Who Wait
Olive Tilford Dargan: Beyond War
Cecelia De Vere: The American flag. Peacemakers, called the children of Great God.
Emily Dickinson: I many times thought Peace had come
Marion Doyle: Mars and Kings have silenced all their singing
Augusta Theodosia Drane: It needs must be that gentle Peace prevail!
Louise Driscoll: The Metal Checks
Marguerite Duras: The civilizing mission
George Eliot: Tart rebuke of crude war propaganda
Emma Catherine Embury: Proud soldier turns from scenes of war
Laura Bell Everett: The Skein of Grievous War
Eleanor Farjeon: Now that you too join the vanishing armies
Marianne Farningham: Give Peace
Anne Finch: Enquiry After Peace
Mary Weston Fordham: Ode to Peace
Margaret Fuller: America, with no prouder emblem than the Dove
Maya Ganina: Peace and homeland
Jessie Wiseman Gibbs: Selections from the Peace Sonnets
Jessie Wiseman Gibbs: The blessed salve of peace for the whole bleeding world
Jessie Wiseman Gibbs: Crown him with many crowns, the Prince of Peace
Jessie Wiseman Gibbs: I sing the soldiers of the coming wars, those that save and heal
Jessie Wiseman Gibbs: They say they are of Christ and do the works of Cain
Jessie Wiseman Gibbs: War is the mailèd hand of criminal states
Jessie Wiseman Gibbs: We feed bread of our children to the war-god’s greed
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Flag of Peace
Mary Putnam Gilmore: Sweet Peace is Here
Ellen Glasgow: Selections on war
Ellen Glasgow: The Altar of the War God
Ellen Glasgow: His vision of the future only an endless warfare and a wasted land
Ellen Glasgow: The Reign of the Brute
Ellen Glasgow: “That killed how many? how many?”
Louise Imogen Guiney: The voice of Peace
Hala Jean Hammond: War’s black hatred
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Selections on peace and war
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Do Not Cheer, Men Are Dying
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Furl the banners stained with blood, ’till war shall be no more
Frances Ellen Harper Watkins: Grant that peace and joy and gladness may like holy angels tread
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Home from war
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Music to soothe all sorrow till war and crime shall cease
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Peace till war and crime shall cease
Felicia Hemans: Selections on peace and war
Felicia Hemans: Say to the hurricane of war, – “Be still”
Felicia Hemans: Speak not of death, till thou hast looked on such
Felicia Hemans: A thousand voices echo “Peace!”
Felicia Hemans: Thousands doomed to moan, condemned by war to hopeless grief unknown
Felicia Hemans: War has still ravaged o’er the blasted plain
Mary Heron: Bid brazen-throated war and discord cease
Mary Heron: Ode on the General Peace
Amanda M. Hicks: A Truce for the Toilers
Martha Lavinia Hoffman: The Song of Peace
Julia Ward Howe: The Development of the Peace Ideal
Julia Ward Howe: Mother’s Day Proclamation 1870
Elizabeth Inchbald: War, a choice of words
Jean Ingelow: And the dove said, “Give us peace!”
Jean Ingelow: Methought the men of war were even as gods
Ellen Key: Overcoming the madness of a world at war
Zofia Kossak: Every creature has its day. War and crocodiles.
Selma Lagerlöf: The Fifth Commandment. The Great Beast is War.
Selma Lagerlöf: The mark of death was on them all
Vernon Lee: Satan’s rules of war
Lily Alice Lefevre: The Bridge of Peace
Marie Lenéru: War is not human fate
Doris Lessing: With war every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains
Isabella Lickbarrow: Invocation To Peace
Martha Shepard Lippincott: Nations now for mammon fight
Martha Shepard Lippincott: Peace on Earth
Martha Shepard Lippincott: Shame will fall upon us for barbarous deeds of war
Amy Lowell: A pattern called a war. Christ! What are patterns for?
Caroline Atherton Mason: Enemy, oh, let our warfare cease!
Lillian Rozell Messenger: Seeking a new world of peace
Lillian Rozell Messenger: Why this feast of shells each day, the fury, blood and wail of war?
Alice Meynell: The true slayers are those who sire soldiers
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Conscientious Objector
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Lament
Emily Huntington Miller: Hymn of Peace
Gabriela Mistral: Dance of Peace
Ruth Comfort Mitchell: He Went for a Soldier
Mary Russell Mitford: Sheath thy gory blade in peace
Harriet Monroe: Over me wash the seas of war
Marianne Moore: I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war
Angela Morgan: Selections on war and peace
Angela Morgan: For the moment’s red renown. Battle Cry of the Mothers.
Angela Morgan: God prays for peace
Angela Morgan: In Spite of War
Angela Morgan: Mothers “Go, fashion the Future’s laws that war shall be no more”
Angela Morgan: Tell us the battlefields have lied, that men are still immaculate
Angela Morgan: War! Shall you be our lover? War! Shall you be our mate?
Angela Morgan: Whether to yield in meekness to War’s devouring curse
Jean Lewis Morris: A Patriot I!
Luise Mühlbach: Battle-field writes names of its heroes in blood
Iris Murdoch: The soldiers should all just throw down their arms
Iris Murdoch: You don’t have to kill people fighting for social justice
Lilika Nakos: Selections on war
Lilika Nakos: The dead man, the living, the house; all were smashed to bits
Lilika Nakos: Do I know what makes men kill each other?
Lilika Nakos: Do you think the war will ever end?
Lilika Nakos: The grandmother’s sin
Lilika Nakos: “Surely God didn’t intend this butchery”
Lilika Nakos: “What’s the war got to do with God?”
Adela Florence Nicolson: Doubtless feasted the jackal and the kite
Grace Fallow Norton: O I have heard the drums beat for war!
Sara Louisa Oberholtzer: The dawn of peace is breaking!
Zoé Oldenbourg: War provides a feast for the vultures
Amelia Opie: Grant, Heaven, those tears may be the last that war, detested war, shall cause!
Frances Sargent Osgood: Peace and the olive branch
Josephine Preston Peabody: Harvest Moon
Jessie Pope: Black, solemn peace is brooding low; peace, still unbroken
George Preedy: One gigantic symbol of war, a cloudy impersonal cohort of Mars
Adelaide A. Procter: Let carnage cease and give us peace!
Charlotte Richardson: Once more let war and discord cease
Marilynne Robinson: The sign was ignored and since then we have had war continuously
Mary Robinson: Selections on war
Mary Robinson: Anticipate the day when ruthless war shall cease to desolate
Mary Robinson: Dread-destructive power of war
Mary Robinson: Impetuous War, the lord of slaughter
Mary Robinson: The soldier sheds, for gold, a brother’s blood
Mary Robinson: Spread once more the fostering rays of Peace
Mary Robinson: The wise shall bid, too late, the sacred olive rise
Christina Rossetti: They reap a red crop from the field. O Man, put up thy sword.
Gabrielle Roy: This was the hope that was uplifting mankind once again: to do away with war
Margaret Sackville: Selections on peace and war
Margaret Sackville: How is it that men slaughter men even here upon the earth?
Margaret Sackville: Nostra Culpa
Margaret Sackville: The Pageant of War
Margaret Sackville: The Peacemakers
Margaret Sackville: Reconciliation over our mutual dead
Margaret Sackville: Quo Vaditis?
Margaret Sackville: So quietly and evenly they walked these million gentle dead
Margaret Sackville: To One Who Denies the Possibility of a Permanent Peace
Margaret Sackville: We are the mothers, and each has lost a son
Margaret Sackville: Who shall deliver us from the memory of these dead?
Vita Sackville-West: Man’s war on his fellow creatures
George Sand: Trader in uniformed flesh and the religion of self
Mary McDermott Santley: The serene light of peace to all mankind
Ethel Talbot Scheffauer: The sun shall rise upon a newer world that has forgot to kill
Olive Schreiner: Give me back my dead!
Olive Schreiner: The bestiality and insanity of war
Olive Schreiner: I have never met a human creature who hates war as I hate it
Anna Seghers: War enthusiasm, brewed from equal parts of age-old memories and total oblivion
Anna Seward: Fierce War has wing’d the arrow that wounds my soul’s repose
Mary Shelley: On peace and war
Mary Shelley: The fate of the world bound up with the death of a single man
Mary Shelley: I do not sympathize in their dreams of massacre and glory
Mary Shelley: I turned to the corpse-strewn earth and felt ashamed of my species
Mary Shelley: Men have slain each other by thousands, now man is a creature of price
Kate Brownlee Sherwood: This one soft whisper – Peace
Lydia Sigourney: Peace was the song the angels sang
Louise Morgan Sill: I am the Hell-god, War!
Ina Duvall Singleton: The Women’s Litany
Edith Sitwell: Dirge for the New Sunrise
M. B. Smedley: Where is the ministry of peace?
Charlotte Turner Smith: The lawless soldiers’ victims
Charlotte Turner Smith: Statesmen! ne’er dreading a scar, let loose the demons of war
Charlotte Turner Smith: Thus man spoils Heaven’s glorious works with blood!
Charlotte Turner Smith: To bathe his savage hands in human blood
Fanny Bixby Spencer: The shame of the cannonade
Fanny Bixby Spencer: Will your son kill mine or will mine kill yours?
Madame de Staël: Voting for war, pronouncing their own death sentence
Marguerite Steen: The sheer destructiveness of war made him angry
Marguerite Steen: The wreckage of the wars
G. B. Stern: Conventions of war? War itself is the outrage.
Margaret Stineback: The Unknown Soldier
Bertha von Suttner: Selections on peace and war
Bertha von Suttner: All Souls’ Day. Field of honor gives way to wasteland of broken hearts
Bertha von Suttner: Among these ills the most dreadful of all – War
Bertha von Suttner: Education hardens children against natural horror which terrors of war awaken
Bertha von Suttner: Higher unity in which every war will appear impious fratricide
Bertha von Suttner: Mounting doubts about war
Bertha von Suttner: Outgrowing the old idolatry for war
Bertha von Suttner: The Protocol of Peace
Bertha von Suttner: Vengeance! War breeds more war.
Bertha von Suttner: War’s sophistry. At last the monster creeps out.
Sara Teasdale: Dusk in War Time
Sara Teasdale: Spring in War-Time
Edith Matilda Thomas: Air war: They are not humans.
Edith Matilda Thomas: The Altar of Moloch
Edith Matilda Thomas: The Flag
Mabel Thomson: A child’s ideal of soldiering
Eunice Tietjens: Children of War
Katrina Trask: Selections on war and peace
Katrina Trask: After the Battle
Katrina Trask: Civilized warfare
Katrina Trask: A dialogue on God and war
Katrina Trask: The Logic of War
Katrina Trask: The Statue of Peace
Lucia Trent: Breed, little mothers, breed for the war lords who slaughter your sons
Nancy Byrd Turner: Let Us Have Peace
Lesya Ukrainka: Do you understand that word called war?
Louise B. Waite: Let There Be Peace
Rebecca West: The dreams of Englishwomen during war
Phillis Wheatley: From every tongue celestial Peace resounds
Anna M. Whitney: The Call for Peace
Margaret Widdemer: Men have to wage world-wars, children are left to die
Margaret Widdemer: A Mother to the War-Makers
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Selections on peace and war
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: The Paean of Peace
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: A Plea To Peace
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: What We Need
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: When the Regiment Came Back
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Women and War
Jane Wilde: Peace with the Olive, and Mercy with the Palm
Helen Maria Williams: Heaven-born peace
Helen Maria Williams: Now burns the savage soul of war
Sarah Williams: Groaning for him they slew
Margaret L. Woods: The forgotten slain
Elinor Wylie: Peace falls unheeded on the dead
Ann Yearsley: The anarchy of war
For peace, against war: literary selections 