Gretchen Warren: Dying Peace

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

American writers on peace and against war

Women writers on peace and war

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Gretchen Warren
Dying Peace

A faithful sentinel had we,
My love and I, for at our door
Peace stood and sang a magic song
Of blessedness, of deathless lore.

And with her song for lullaby
I rocked a weeping babe to rest,
While past the open lattice flew
Dark evening swallows home to nest.

But terribly that song has ceased
And she lies martyred on the plain,
Where brave men, shuddering, fight and fall
That dying Peace may rise again.

And now to bind her bleeding wounds
My love runs out at dawn of day,
And many another goes with him
To that grim field, where, torn away

From hearth and home and sleeping child,
White Peace lies ghastly, stained with red;
Through my lone window, with dimmed eyes
I see them lift her stricken head.

But now with twilight breaks a cry
Of wilder battle from the west,
And in the dusk my love sinks dead,
His face upon her ebbing breast.