Mathilde Blind: Reaping War’s harvest grim and gory

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

British writers on peace and war

Women writers on peace and war

Mathilde Blind: All vile things that batten on disaster follow feasting in the wake of war

Mathilde Blind: Widowing the world of men to win the world

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Mathilde Blind
From The Ascent of Man

Creature of hopes and fears.
Of mirth and many tears,
He makes himself a thousand costly altars.
Whence smoke of sacrifice,
Fragrant with myrrh and spice,
Ascends to heaven as the flame leaps and falters;
Where, like a king above the Cloud control,
God sits enthroned and rules Man’s subject soul.

Yet grievous here below
And manifold Man’s woe;
Though he can stay the flood and bind the waters.
His hand he shall not stay
That bids him sack and slay
And turn the waving fields to fields of slaughters;
And, as he reaps War’s harvest grim and gory,
Commits a thousand crimes and calls it glory.

Vast empires fall and rise,
As when in sunset skies
The monumental clouds lift flashing towers
With turrets, spires, and bars
Lit by confederate stars
Till the bright rack dissolves in flying showers:
Kindoms on kingdoms have their fleeting day,
Dazzle the conquered world, and pass away.