Fanny Bixby Spencer: Will your son kill mine or will mine kill yours?

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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

Fanny Bixby Spencer: The shame of the cannonade

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Fanny Bixby Spencer
Warrior Mothers

You wait as I for the fatal word
From the bare steel line where the death-ghoul lures.
Your pulse bounds up by the same thought stirred;
Will your son kill mine or will mine kill yours?

For you and I in our thoughts are brave
While pride beguiles and loud boast assures;
But blank fear skulks by the sky-topped grave.
Will your son kill mine or will mine kill yours?

Oh, the blood-laugh rings on the wind tonight
As blind time revels and rage endures.
You’re knitting too by the pale lamp light.
Will your son kill mine or will mine kill yours?

Your soul hates me as my soul hates you,
For wrath-lit passion all else obscures,
And out hearts death-griped fight the grim fight through
Will your son kill mine or will mine kill yours?